Page:Tales of humour and romance translated by Holcroft.djvu/217

 I related your little story for the first time, Eugenius and Rosamond, whom I dare no longer call by your own names, my friends and I were walking in an English garden. We came opposite to to a newly painted sarcophagus, standing on its pedestal. Beyond it, over the green garden, a white obelisk rose conspicuous, which pointed out the spot where two sister-princesses, had, after a painful separation, again united and embraced, and upon which the inscription ran: "Here we met again."—The summit of the obelisk gleamed already in the rays of the fall moon, and here I related the simple story. But thou, dear reader, trace what will do as well as the real sarcophagus and the obelisk,—the inscription of the sarcophagus in the ashes of the past, and let the letters of the obelisk be imprinted upon your inmost soul with your heart's blood.

Many souls drop like the flowers, yet like the spotless buds, are trodden down in the common earth, and often lie soiled and crushed in the print of a hoof.—You too were crushed, Eugenius and Rosamond! Tender souls like yours have their joys torn from them by three robbers: by the world,—whose rough grasp bestows nothing on their hearts but scars,—by fate, which takes not away the tear from the lovely eye,