Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 2.djvu/217

Rh no finger, and I will tap on thy heart with it.” The skeleton, thus piled together, now looked for him who was standing at the window, and powerless to stir from it; and carried in the one hand, instead of a sandglass, the ever-striking steeple-clock, and held out the finger of ice, like a dagger, far into the air

Then he saw his victim above at the window, and raised himself as high as the laurel-tree to stab straight into his bosom with the finger,—and stalked towards him. But as he came nearer, his pale bones grew redder, and vapours floated woolly round his haggard form. Flowers started up from the ground; and he stood transfigured and without the clam of the grave, hovering above them, and the balm-breath from the flower-cups wafted him gently on;—and as he came nearer, the scythe and cloak were gone, and in his bony breast he had a heart, and on his bony head red lips;—and nearer still, there gathered on him soft, transparent, rosebalm-dipt flesh, like the splendour of an Angel flying hither from the starry blue;—and close at hand, he was an Angel with shut snow-white eyelids

The heart of my friend, quivering like a Harmonica-bell, now melted in bliss in his clear bosom;—and when the Angel opened its eyes, his were pressed together by the weight of celestial rapture, and his dream fled away.— —

But not his life: he opened his hot eyes, and—his good wife had hold of his feverish hand, and was standing in room of the Angel.

The fever abated towards morning: but the certainty of dying still throbbed in every artery of the hapless man. He called for his fair little infant into his sick-bed, and pressed it silently, though it began to cry, too hard against his paternal heavy-laden breast. Then towards noon his soul became cool, and the sultry thunder-clouds within it drew back. And here he described to us the previous (as it were, arsenical) fantasies of his usually quiet head. But it is even those tense nerves, which have not quivered at the touch of a poetic hand striking them to melody of sorrow, that start and fly asunder more easily under the fierce hand of Fate, when with sweeping stroke it smites into discord the firmset strings.

But towards night his ideas again began rushing in a torch Rh