Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/63

507^th STATION

The Theft of the Souvenir.—Answers to previous Stations.—On the Emigration of the Dead to the Planets.—The Threefold World in Man.—Grief without Hope.—The Seal of Immortality.—The Country-Seat.—The Balloons.—Ecstasy.

HEN it is three o'clock, and a wandering Arcadian council is very well but somewhat warm, when the narrowing Adour, which has its source at the end of the Valley, flows round a projecting tongue of land, and draws its silver gauze cover over the pale moon reposing on its breast,^[1] when round this slip of earth, this flowery anchoring place, half water scene, half bowling green, a broad-leaved oak arcade grows, beneath which trembles a sun-gilt shadow, gliding from between the branches of the trees, on to the grass, embroidered by the restless, roving, gay-colored sand, on the book of nature—its insects, when the hammering in the shining marble blocks, the living Alp-horns, the bleating pasture-sheep, and the murmuring of waves fill the heart to its topmost branches and up to the brim with life-balsam, and the head with life-spirit; and when so many beauties are heard and seen,—living beauties who walk are inclined to sit down on the

1. The sun reflected in the water.