Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/380



THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF AN UNHAPPY MAN.

N old man stood in the New-Year's night at the window, and gazed with a look of restless despair upon the immutable, ever-blooming heaven, and out over the still pure white earth whereupon there was now no one so joyless and sleepless as he. For his grave stood near to him. It was covered only with the snow of age, not with the green of youth; and he brought with him thither out of his whole rich life nothing but errors and sins and sickness; a ruined body, a desolated soul, a breast full of poison, an old age full of remorse. The fair days of his youth wandered about him now like ghosts, and they bore him back again to that clear morning when his father first placed him at the cross-road of life, the right hand leading by the sunny ways of virtue into a wide, peaceful land, full of light and of harvests; the left, down into the mole-ways of vice towards a black cavern, full of down-dropping poison, full of darting serpents and dark sultry damps.

Ah! the serpents hung about his breast, and the poison-drops upon his tongue, and he knew now where he was.

Knowing not what he did, and with unspeakable grief, he cried out to Heaven: "Give me my youth once more!