226 H UNGARIAN LITERATORE Though the meadow be covered with snow, yet it has had its time of grass and fiowers . But if fiowers die in the bud, and if the new-horn hope of spring die without summer's fulfilment, then indeed is there cause for sorrow . Oh, be glad, bright youthful spirit. Be thy true self. Thou art not yet strong enough to bear the weight of winter's snow." When the girl died, his friends tried to console the bereaved father by telling bim that time would soothe his sorrow, but years afterwards he said : 11 My grief is like a great weight, the Ionger l bear it the more it oppresses me." For nearly ten years he did not publisb a single poem. Th en his fame rapidly increased . He became wealthy too, from th e numerous new editions of his works, and his lucrative ap pointments. The king presented bim with the Order of St. Stephen, a distinction which confers a rank equal to that of a baron. But after his daughter's death, Arany was never the same man that he had been before. Amidst the turmoil of the capital, he lived like a stranger. Although he was in the forernost ranks of the men of genius and learning, in the magnificent building of the Academy he was always drearning of his littie native village, and 11 of a cottage which my fond fancy is ever building there." Three years beiore his death, Arany published Toldi's Love, the central portion of his great trilogy, dealing with his hero's ma nhood. Thus, at the age of sixty two, he oompleted the work which he began at twenty nine. Once, in the spring of 1882, he scribbled on a slip of paper in his quietly humoraus way : 1' In the sixty-sixth year of my life, God will reap me like ripe com, and lay
