Three days ago, the anniversary of our meeting; and, alas! of our eternal seperation, after a day of killing emotion, I caused myself to be led once more to behold the face of nature.

I caused myself to be carried to some meadows some miles distant from my cottage; the grass was being mowed, and there was the scent of hay in the fields; all the earth look[ed] fresh and its inhabitants happy.

Evening approached and I beheld the sun set.

Three years ago and on that day and hour it shone through the branches and leaves of the beech wood and its beams flickered upon the countenance of him whom I then beheld for the last time.[86] I now saw that divine orb, gilding all the clouds with unwonted splendour, sink behind the horizon; it disappeared from a world where he whom I would seek exists not; it approached a world where he exists not[.] Why do I weep so bitterly?
Why my [_sic_] does my heart heave with vain endeavour to cast aside the bitter anguish that covers it "as the waters cover the sea." I go from this world where he is no longer and soon I shall meet him in another.
Farewell, Woodville, the turf will soon be green on my grave; and the violets will bloom on it.

_There_ is my hope and my expectation; your's are in this world; may they be fulfilled.[87] NOTES TO _MATHILDA_ Abbreviations: _F of F--A_ _The Fields of Fancy_, in Lord Abinger's notebook _F of F--B_ _The Fields of Fancy_, in the notebook in the Bodleian Library _S-R fr_ fragments of _The Fields of Fancy_ among the papers of the late Sir John Shelley-Rolls, now in the Bodleian Library [1] The name is spelled thus in the MSS of _Mathilda_ and _The Fields of Fancy_, though in the printed _Journal_ (taken from _Shelley and Mary_) and in the _Letters_ it is spelled _Matilda_.