Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/351

 lowed to glitter on the flowers like other happier dew-drops that live the whole night through and sparkle in the moonlight, and through the morning onwards to noonday: "The sun," said the child, "has chased them away with his heat—or swallowed them in his wrath." Soon after came rain and a rainbow; whereupon his father pointed upwards: "See" said he, "there stand thy dew-drops gloriously re-set—a glittering jewelry—in the heavens; and the clownish foot tramples on them no more. By this, my child, thou art taught that what withers upon earth blooms again in heaven." Thus the father spoke, and knew not that he spoke prefiguring words: for soon after the delicate child, with the morning brightness of his early wisdom, was exhaled, like a dewdrop, into heaven.

ON DEATH.

E should all think of death as a less hideous object, if it simply untenanted our bodies of a spirit, without corrupting them; secondly, if the grief which we experience at the spectacle of our friends' graves were not by some confusion of the mind blended with the image of our own; thirdly, if we had not in this life seated ourselves in a warm domestic nest, which we are unwilling to quit for the cold blue regions of the unfathomable heavens; finally,—if death were denied to us. Once in dreams I saw a human being of heavenly intellectual faculties, and his aspirations were heavenly; but he was chained (methought) eternally to the earth. The immortal old man had five great wounds in his happiness—five worms that gnawed forever at his heart: he was unhappy in springtime, because that is a season of hope—and rich