Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/107

Rh and air courted the flower, but light was the favored one; it leaned toward the light; if this vanished the flower rolled its leaves together, and went to sleep embraced by the air. "It is the light which adorns me," said the flower; "but the air gives you the breath of life!" whispered the voice ot the poet.

Close by stood a boy, striking with his stick into the muddy ditch; the drops of water spurted up amongst the green branches, and the clerk thought of the millions of invisible animalcules in the drops which were cast so high in the air, that in proportion to their size it would be the same as if we were whirled up high above the clouds.

As the clerk thought of this, and the great change that had taken place in him, he smiled and said: "I must be asleep and dreaming. It is most remarkable in any case. How naturally one can dream, and at the same time know it is only a dream! I wish I could remember it to-morrow, when I wake up; just now I seem to be quite unusually fit for anything. I can see everything so clearly, and feel so wide awake and bright, but I am sure that if I recollect anything of it to-morrow, it will only be nonsense; I have experienced it before. It is just the same with all the wise and splendid things one learns and says in dreams, as with the gold of supernatural beings, when you receive it, it is bright and sparkling, but by daylight it is only stones and withered leaves. Alas!" he sighed, quite sadly, looking at the birds that were singing and hopping from branch to branch, "they are far better off than I. To fly—that must be a splendid gift of nature—happy is he who is born with it! Yes, if I were to wish to change into anything, it would be into a little lark."

At the same moment the tails and sleeves of his coat grew into wings, his clothes turned into feathers, and the galoshes into claws. He noticed this quite plainly, and laughed to himself: "Well, now I can see I am dreaming. But never have I dreamed anything so foolish before"; and he flew up among the green branches and began to sing; but there was no poetry in his song, for the poetical nature was gone. The galoshes, like every one who does his business thoroughly, could only do one thing at a time; he wanted to be a poet, and he became one; now he wanted to be a little bird, but on changing into this his former characteristics disappeared.

"This is very funny indeed!" said he. "In the daytime I sit in the police office among the most voluminous documents, and at night I dream I am flying about as a lark in Frederiksberg Garden; one could write quite a comedy about it."

He then flew down into the grass, turned his head from one side to the other, and struck his beak at the pliant blades of grass, which, in proportion to his present size, appeared to him as large as the branches of the North-African palms.

The next moment everything around him became as black as the