This is the poet’s symbol—­paint it: 

    “THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.”

But why none of the worthier figures—­the candid, the honest, and the beautiful?  They come also, and on them Scherezade fixes her eye.  Encouraged by them, she boldly raises her proud head aloft towards the stars, and sings of the harmony there above, and here beneath, in man’s heart.

That will not clearly show the symbol: 

    “THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.”

The sword of death hangs over her head whilst she relates—­and the Sultan-figure bids us expect that it will fall.  Scherezade is the victor:  the poet is, like her, also a victor.  He is rich, victorious—­even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours.  There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after bubble sparkles on the magic stream.  The heavens shine with shooting stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away.  The world does not know it, for it is the poet’s own creation, richer than the king’s costly illuminations.  He is happy, as Scherezade is; he is victorious, he is mighty. Imagination adorns his walls with tapestry, such as no land’s ruler owns; feeling makes the beauteous chords sound to him from the human breast; understanding raises him, through the magnificence of creation, up to God, without his forgetting that he stands fast on the firm earth.  He is mighty, he is happy, as few are.  We will not place him in the stocks of misconstruction, for pity and lamentation; we merely paint his symbol, dip into the colours on the world’s least attractive side, and obtain it most comprehensibly from

    “THE SULTAN AND SCHEREZADE.”

See—­that is it!  Do not behead Scherezade!

THE DAL-ELV.

* * * * *

Before Homer sang there were heroes; but they are not known; no poet celebrated their fame.  It is just so with the beauties of nature, they must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world’s patent for what they are, and then they may be said first to exist.  The elvs of the north have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in unknown beauty.  The world’s great highroad does take this direction; no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable.  Schubert is as yet the only stranger who has written about the wild magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its greatness.

Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.