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Page 19
The poet shook his head, the copying-clerk did the same. Each one kept to his
own opinion, and so they separated.
"It's a strange race, those poets!" said the clerk, who was very fond of
soliloquizing. "I should like some day, just for a trial, to take such nature
upon me, and be a poet myself; I am very sure I should make no such miserable
verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most delicious day for a poet.
Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening into life. The air is so
unusually clear, the clouds sail on so buoyantly, and from the green herbage a
fragrance is exhaled that fills me with delight. For many a year have I not
felt as at this moment."
We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is become a poet; to give
further proof of it, however, would in most cases be insipid, for it is a most
foolish notion to fancy a poet different from other men. Among the latter
there may be far more poetical natures than many an acknowledged poet, when
examined more closely, could boast of; the difference only is, that the poet
possesses a better mental memory, on which account he is able to retain the
feeling and the thought till they can be embodied by means of words; a faculty
which the others do not possess. But the transition from a commonplace nature
to one that is richly endowed, demands always a more or less breakneck leap
over a certain abyss which yawns threateningly below; and thus must the sudden
change with the clerk strike the reader.
"The sweet air!" continued he of the police-office, in his dreamy imaginings;
"how it reminds me of the violets in the garden of my aunt Magdalena! Yes,
then I was a little wild boy, who did not go to school very regularly. O
heavens! 'tis a long time since I have thought on those times. The good old
soul! She lived behind the Exchange. She always had a few twigs or green
shoots in water--let the winter rage without as it might. The violets exhaled
their sweet breath, whilst I pressed against the windowpanes covered with
fantastic frost-work the copper coin I had heated on the stove, and so made
peep-holes. What splendid vistas were then opened to my view! What change--what
magnificence! Yonder in the canal lay the ships frozen up, and deserted by
their whole crews, with a screaming crow for the sole occupant. But when the
spring, with a gentle stirring motion, announced her arrival, a new and busy
life arose; with songs and hurrahs the ice was sawn asunder, the ships were
fresh tarred and rigged, that they might sail away to distant lands. But I
have remained here--must always remain here, sitting at my desk in the office,
and patiently see other people fetch their passports to go abroad. Such is my
fate! Alas!"--sighed he, and was again silent. "Great Heaven! What is come to
me! Never have I thought or felt like this before! It must be the summer air
that affects me with feelings almost as disquieting as they are refreshing."
He felt in his pocket for the papers. "These police-reports will soon stem the
torrent of my ideas, and effectually hinder any rebellious overflowing of the
time-worn banks of official duties"; he said to himself consolingly, while his
eye ran over the first page. "DAME TIGBRITH, tragedy in five acts." "What is
that? And yet it is undeniably my own handwriting. Have I written the tragedy?
Wonderful, very wonderful!--And this--what have I here? 'INTRIGUE ON THE
RAMPARTS; or THE DAY OF REPENTANCE: vaudeville with new songs to the most
favorite airs.' The deuce! Where did I get all this rubbish? Some one must
have slipped it slyly into my pocket for a joke. There is too a letter to me;
a crumpled letter and the seal broken."
Yes; it was not a very polite epistle from the manager of a theatre, in which
both pieces were flatly refused.
"Hem! hem!" said the clerk breathlessly, and quite exhausted he seated himself
on a bank. His thoughts were so elastic, his heart so tender; and
involuntarily he picked one of the nearest flowers. It is a simple daisy, just
bursting out of the bud. What the botanist tells us after a number of
imperfect lectures, the flower proclaimed in a minute. It related the mythus
of its birth, told of the power of the sun-light that spread out its delicate
leaves, and forced them to impregnate the air with their incense--and then he
thought of the manifold struggles of life, which in like manner awaken the
budding flowers of feeling in our bosom. Light and air contend with chivalric
emulation for the love of the fair flower that bestowed her chief favors on
the latter; full of longing she turned towards the light, and as soon as it
vanished, rolled her tender leaves together and slept in the embraces of the
air. "It is the light which adorns me," said the flower.
"But 'tis the air which enables thee to breathe," said the poet's voice.
Close by stood a boy who dashed his stick into a wet ditch. The drops of water
splashed up to the green leafy roof, and the clerk thought of the million of
ephemera which in a single drop were thrown up to a height, that was as great
doubtless for their size, as for us if we were to be hurled above the clouds.
While he thought of this and of the whole metamorphosis he had undergone, he
smiled and said, "I sleep and dream; but it is wonderful how one can dream so
naturally, and know besides so exactly that it is but a dream. If only
to-morrow on awaking, I could again call all to mind so vividly! I seem in
unusually good spirits; my perception of things is clear, I feel as light and
cheerful as though I were in heaven; but I know for a certainty, that if
to-morrow a dim remembrance of it should swim before my mind, it will then
seem nothing but stupid nonsense, as I have often experienced
already--especially before I enlisted under the banner of the police, for that
dispels like a whirlwind all the visions of an unfettered imagination. All we
hear or say in a dream that is fair and beautiful is like the gold of the
subterranean spirits; it is rich and splendid when it is given us, but viewed
by daylight we find only withered leaves. Alas!" he sighed quite sorrowful,
and gazed at the chirping birds that hopped contentedly from branch to branch,
"they are much better off than I! To fly must be a heavenly art; and happy do
I prize that creature in which it is innate. Yes! Could I exchange my nature
with any other creature, I fain would be such a happy little lark!"
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