Page:Tales from the German - Oxenford.djvu/281

261 THE MOON.

BY JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

, Oh Eugenius and Rosamond,—you, whom I may no longer designate by your right names,—I was first about to tell your short history, my friends and I walked into an English garden. We went by a new-painted coffin, on the foot-board of which was written: "I pass away." Above the verdant garden rose a white obelisk, with which two sister-princesses had marked the spot where they now met and embraced, and the inscription on which was: "Here we have found each other again." The point of the obelisk was glittering in the full moon, and here I told my simple story. But do thou, gentle reader, draw—which is as much as coffin and obelisk—draw, I say, the inscription on the coffin into the ashes of oblivion, and write the letters of the obelisk with pure human heart's blood in thy inmost self.

Many souls drop from heaven like flowers; but, with their white buds, they are trodden down into the mud, and lie soiled and crushed in the print of a hoof. You also were crushed, Eugenius and Rosamond. Tender souls like yours are attacked by three robbers of their joys—the mob, whose rough gripe gives to such soft hearts nothing but scars; destiny, which does not wipe away the tear from a fair soul full of brilliancy, but the lustre should perish also, as we do not wipe a wet diamond, lest it should grow dim; your own hearts which rejoice too much, and enjoy too little, have too much hope, and too little power of endurance. Rosamond was a bright pearl, pierced by anguish—parted from all that belonged to her, she only quivered in her sorrows like a detached twig of the sensitive plant at the approach of night—her life was a quiet warm rain and that of her husband was a bright lost sunshine. In his presence she averted her eyes, when they had just been fixed on her sick child, that was only two years old, and was in this life a wavering thin-winged butterfly, beneath a pelting shower. The imagination of Eugenius, with its too large wings shattered his slight, delicate frame; the lily bell of his tender body could not contain his mighty soul; the place whence sighs originate, his breast, was destroyed like his happiness. He had nothing left in the world but his affectionate heart, and for that heart there were but two human beings.

These persons wished, in the spring-time, to quit the whirlpool of mankind, which beat so hardly and so coldly against their hearts. ((rule}}