Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/324

300 in the truly splendid Rosenthal, the gnats, in the best season of the year, allowed no tender thoughts to arise, so did I, by unwearied, persevering endeavour, become extremely attentive to the small life of nature (I would use this word after the analogy of "still life"); and, since the pretty events which one perceives within this circle represent but little in themselves, so I accustomed myself to see in them a significance, which inclined now toward the symbolical, now toward the allegorical, side, accordingly as intuition, feeling, or reflection had the preponderance. I will relate one incident in place of many.

I was, after the fashion of humanity, in love with my name, and, as young, uneducated people commonly do, wrote it down everywhere. Once I had carved it very handsomely and accurately on the smooth bark of a linden-tree of moderate age. The following autumn, when my affection for Annette was in its fullest bloom, I took the trouble to cut hers above it. Toward the end of the winter, in the meantime, like a capricious lover, I had wantonly sought many opportunities to tease her and cause her vexation: in the spring I chanced to visit the spot; and the sap, which was rising strongly in the trees, had welled out through the incisions which formed her name, and which were not yet crusted over, and moistened with innocent vegetable tears the already hardened traces of my own. Thus to see her here weeping over me,—me, who had so often called up her tears by my ill conduct, filled me with confusion. At the remembrance of my injustice and of her love, even the tears came into my eyes; I hastened to implore pardon of her, doubly and trebly: and I turned this incident into an idyl, which I never could read to myself without affection, or to others without emotion.