Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/127

Rh "Oh, consider me then a little poet!" I prayed. "Consider me nothing at all! And I am not a poet; I have only fits of poetry like fits of toothache. Leave me, oh leave me!"

"Will you acknowledge, then, that I am mightier than poetry, philosophy, mathematics, and all the music?" she said. "Mightier than all these notions that are painted on canvas or hewn in marble? I am older than any of them. I was born close to the Garden of Paradise, just outside, where the wind blew and the wet toadstools grew. It was I who made Eve put on clothes in the cold weather, and Adam also. There was manifestation of power in the first toothache, I can tell you!"

"I believe it all," I said. "But leave me, oh leave me!"

"Yes, if you will give up being a poet, never put verse on paper, slate, or any kind of writing material, then I will let you off; but I shall come again, my poet!"

"I swear!" I said; "only let me never see or feel you any more!"

"See me you shall, but in a more substantial shape, in a shape more dear to you than I am at present. You shall see me as Aunty Milly, and I will say: 'Write poetry, my dear boy! You are a great poet, perhaps the greatest we have!' But if you believe me, and you begin to write poetry, then I will set music to your verses, and play them on your mouth-organ. You dear child! Remember me, when vou see Aunty Milly!"

And then she vanished.

At parting I received something like the thrust of a red-hot awl through my cheek-bone, but it soon subsided. I felt as if I were gliding along the smooth water; I saw how the white water-lilies, with their large green leaves, bent and sank down under me; how they withered and perished, and how I sank with them; how I was set free and found peace and rest.

"To die, to melt away like snow!" resounded in the water; "to evaporate into air, to sail away like the clouds!"

Great shining names and inscriptions on waving banners of victory, the letters patent of immortality, written on the wing of an ephemera, shone down to me through the water.

The sleep was deep, a sleep without dreams. I did not hear the whistling wind, the banging gate, the neighbor's noisy bell, or the gymnastics of the lodger.

What happiness!

Then came a sudden gust of wind, so that the locked door to aunty's room burst open. Aunty jumped up, got dressed, and came into my room.

I slept like one of God's angels, she said, and had not the heart to wake me.

I awoke later on and opened my eyes, but did not remember that aunty was in the house; but I soon remembered it—and also my toothache vision.