The Piazza Tales

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Herman Melville

The Piazza Tales

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Fairies there, thought I; some haunted ring where fairies dance.

Time passed; and the following May, after a gentle shower upon the mountains–a little shower islanded in misty seas of sunshine; such a distant shower–and sometimes two, and three, and four of them, all visible together in different parts–as I love to watch from the piazza, instead of thunder storms, as I used to, which wrap old Greylock, like a Sinai, till one thinks swart Moses must be climbing among scathed hemlocks there; after, I say, that, gentle shower, I saw a rainbow, resting its further end just where, in autumn, I had marked the mole. Fairies there, thought I; remembering that rainbows bring out the blooms, and that, if one can but get to the rainbow’s end, his fortune is made in a bag of gold. Yon rainbow’s end, would I were there, thought I. And none the less I wished it, for now first noticing what seemed some sort of glen, or grotto, in the mountain side; at least, whatever it was, viewed through the rainbow’s medium, it glowed like the Potosi mine. But a work-a-day neighbor said, no doubt it was but some old barn–an abandoned one, its broadside beaten in, the acclivity its background. But I, though I had never been there, I knew better.

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