Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/56



I have been in Upsala,—said the Moon. She looked down upon the great castle, with the miserable grass of its trampled fields. She mirrored herself in the river Fyris, whilst the steam-boat drove the terrified fish among the reeds. Clouds careered along the moonlit sky, and cast long shadows over the graves, as they are called, of Odin, Thor, and F'reya. Names are carved in the scanty turf upon the heights. Here there is no building-stone in which the visitors can hew their names; no walled fences on which they can paint them; they cut away, therefore, the turf, and the naked earth stares forth in the large letters of their names, which look like a huge net spread over the hill. An immortality which a fresh growth of turf destroys.