“I should think it was.  To me it is all a beautiful cloud landscape, which I comprehend and feel, and yet should find some difficulty perhaps in explaining.”

“And why need one always explain?  Some feelings are quite untranslatable.  No language has yet been found for them.  They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet, when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty, all at once; just as glow-worms, which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candlesare lighted, are found to be only worms, like so many others.”

“Very true.  We ought sometimes to be content with feeling.  Here, now, is an exquisite piece, which soothes one like the fall of evening shadows,—­like the dewy coolness of twilight after a sultry day.  I shall not give you a bald translation of my own, because I have laid up in my memory another, which, though not very literal, equals the original in beauty.  Observe how finely it commences.

“Many a year is in its grave,

Since I crossed this restless wave;

And the evening, fair as ever,

Shines on ruin, rock, and river.

“Then, in this same boat, beside,

Sat two comrades old and tried;

One with all a father’s truth,

One with all the fire of youth.

“One on earth in silence wrought,

And his grave in silence sought;

But the younger, brighter form

Passed in battle and in storm!

“So, whene’er I turn my eye

Back upon the days gone by,

Saddening thoughts of friends come o’er me,—­

Friends, who closed their course before me.

“Yet what binds us, friend to friend,

But that soul with soul can blend?

Soul-like were those hours of yore;

Let us walk in soul once more!

“Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee;

Take,—­I give it willingly;

For, invisibly to thee,

Spirits twain have crossed with me!”

“O, that is beautiful,—­’beautiful exceedingly!’ Who translated it?”

“I do not know.  I wish I could find him out.  It is certainly admirably done; though in the measure of the original there is something like the rocking motion of a boat, which is not preserved in the translation.”

“And is Uhland always so soothing and spiritual?”

“Yes, he generally looks into the spirit-world.  I am now trying to find here a little poem on the Death of a Country Clergyman; in which he introduces a beautiful picture.  But I cannot turn to it.  No matter.  He describes the spirit of the good old man, returning to earth on a bright summer morning, and standing amid the golden corn and the red and blue flowers, and mildly greeting the reapers as of old.  The idea is beautiful, is it not?”

“Yes, very beautiful!”