"She is as slender as the poplar-willow, as fleet as the hastening waters. A Mayflower odorous and sweet."--H. P. HOLST.

 

"Ah, where is the rose?"--Lulu, by GUNTELBURG.

 

The evening before Otto was to travel with the merchant's family to Roeskelde he called upon the family where Miss Sophie was staying. Her dear mamma had left three days before. Wilhelm had wished to accompany him to Roeskelde, but the mother did not desire it.

 

"We have had a pleasure to-day," said Sophie, "a pleasure from which we shall long have enjoyment. Have you seen the new book, the 'Letters of a Wandering Ghost?' It is Baggesen himself in his most perfect beauty, a music which I never believed could have been given in words. This is a poet! He has made July days in the poetry of Denmark. Natural thoughts are so strikingly, and yet so simply expressed; one has the idea that one could write such verses one's self, they fall so lightly."

 

"They are like prose," said the lady, "and yet the most beautifully perfect verse I know. You must read the book, Mr. Thostrup!"

 

"Perhaps you will read to us this evening?" said Sophie. "I should very much like to hear it again."

 

"In a second reading one shall enter better into the individual beauties," said the lady of the house.

 

"I will remain and listen," said the host.

 

"This must be a masterpiece!" exclaimed Otto,"--a true masterpiece, since all are so delighted with it."

 

"It is Baggesen himself; and truly as he must sing in that world where everything mortal is ennobled."

 

"'Meadows all fragrance, the strongholds of pleasure,

 

 

Heaven blue streamlets,

That speed through the green woods in musical measure,'"

 

 

began Otto, and the spiritual battle-piece with beauty and tone developed itself more and more; they found themselves in the midst of the winter camp of the Muses, where the poet with

 

 

..."lyre on his shoulder and sword at his side,

Hastened to fight with the foes of the Muses."

 

 

Otto's gloomy look won during the perusal a more animated expression. "Excellent!" exclaimed he; "this is what I myself have thought and felt, but, alas! have been unable to express."

 

"I am a strange girl," said Sophie; "whenever I read a new poet of distinguished talent, I consider that he is the greatest. It was so with Byron and Victor Hugo. 'Cain' overwhelmed me, 'Notre Dame' carried me away with it. Once I could imagine no greater poet than Walter Scott, and yet I forget him over Oehlenschlager; yes, I remember a time when Heiberg's vaudevilles took almost the first place among my chosen favorites. Thus I know myself and my changeable disposition, and yet I firmly believe that I shall make an exception with this work. Other poets showed me the objects of the outer world, this one shows me my own mind: my own thoughts, my own being he presents before me, and therefore I shall always take the same interest in the Ghost's Letters."

 

"They are true food for the mind," said Otto; "they are as words in season; there must be movement in the lake, otherwise it will become a bog."

 

"The author is severe toward those whom he has introduced," said the lady; "but he carries, so to say, a sweet knife. A wound from a sharp sword-blade is not so painful as that from a rusty, notched knife."

 

"But who may the author be?" said Sophie.

 

"May we never learn!" replied Otto. "Uncertainty gives the book something piquant. In such a small country as ours it is good for the author to be unknown. Here we almost tread upon each other, and look into each other's garments. Here the personal conditions of the author have much to do with success; and then there are the newspapers, where either friend or enemy has an assistant, whereas the being anonymous gives it the patent of nobility. It is well never to know an author. What does his person matter to us, if his book is only good?

 

 

"'Crush and confound the rabble dissolute

That desecrate thy poet's grave?'"

 

 

read Otto, and the musical poem was at an end. All were enchanted with it. Otto alone made some small objections: "The Muses ought not to come with 'trumpets and drums,' and so many expressions similar to 'give a blow on the chaps,' etc., ought not to appear."

 

"But if the poet will attack what is coarse," said Sophie, "he must call things by their proper names. He presents us with a specimen of the prosaic filth, but in a soap-bubble. We may see it, but not seize upon it. I consider that you are wrong!"

 

"The conception of idea and form," said Otto, "does not seem to be sufficiently presented to one; both dissolve into one. Even prose is a form."

 

"But the form itself is the most important," said the lady of the house; "with poetry as with sculpture, it is the form which gives the meaning."

 

"No, pardon me!" said Otto; "poetry is like the tree which God allows to grow. The inward power expresses itself in the form; both are equally important, but I consider the internal as the most holy. This is here the poet's thought. The opinion which he expresses affects us as much as the beautiful dress in which he has presented it."

 

Now commenced a contest upon form and material, such as was afterward maintained throughout the whole of Copenhagen.

 

"I shall always admire the 'Letters of a Wandering Ghost,'" said Sophie,--"always rave about these poems. To-night I shall dream of nothing but this work of art."

 

How little men can do that which they desire, did this very moment teach.

 

When we regard the fixed star through a telescope and lose ourselves in contemplation, a little hair can conceal the mighty body, a grain of dust lead us from these sublime thoughts. A letter came for Miss Sophie; a traveller brought it from her mother: she was already in Funen, and announced her safe arrival.

 

"And the news?" said the hostess.

 

"Mamma has hired a new maid, or, rather, she has taken to be with her an amiable young girl--the pretty Eva in Roeskelde. Mr. Thostrup and Wilhelm related to us this summer several things about her which make her interesting. We ............