As Mariann turned and went forth with her bundle of wood, Amrie looked smiling after her. “There goes a great singing bird,” she thought. None but the sun saw how long the child continued to smile and to think.
AMRIE.—Page [64].
Thus, day after day, Amrie lived. Long she sat dreaming, as the wind moved the shadows of the branches around her. Then she gazed at the motionless banks of clouds on the horizon, or upon the flying clouds that chased each other through the sky. As without, in the wide space, so in the soul of the child the cloud-pictures arose and melted away, receiving, for the moment only, existence and form. Who can tell how the soul of the child interpreted and gave life to the cloud, within or without?
When spring breaks over the earth, thou canst not comprehend the thousand-fold seeds and sprouts spread over the ground—the singing and jubilee upon the branches and in the air. A single lark seizes upon eye and ear. It soars aloft. For a time thou canst follow it as it spreads its wings; for a time thou canst not determine whether that dark point is thy vanishing lark. Now it is gone from thy eye, and soon from thy ear; for thou canst not tell if the singing thou hearest comes from thy vanished lark. Couldst thou listen for a whole day to a single lark in the whole wide heaven, thou wouldst hear that the morning, the mid-day, and the evening song, are wholly different; and couldst thou trace it from its first trembling pipe, through the whole year, thou wouldst find what various tones mingle in its spring, its summer, and its harvest song. Over the first stubble-field sing a new brood of larks.
When the spring breaks in a human soul,—when the whole world opens before it and within it,—thou canst not understand the thousand voices that make themselves heard. Thou canst not seize nor hold the thousand buds and blossoms that perpetually unfold and extend themselves; thou only knowest that there it sings, and that it expands.
How quietly spring appeared again in the firmly rooted plant. There, by the meadow-hedge and the pear-tree, the sloe blossomed early, and was only rarely ripe. What a beautiful bloom has the whortleberry, and what a powerful perfume it has! The little pears are quite formed, and glow with a faint red; and the poisonous night-shade already looks dark. Soon will come those clear, sharp-cut, harvest days, when the atmosphere is of so clear and cloudless a blue, that during the whole day the half-moon can be seen in the sky; then we mark how it fills itself, and how it wanes, till only a finely-cut side, like a little cloud, stands in the horizon. In nature, and in the human soul, there is a pause before the goal is reached.
There was soon life upon the road that led through the Holder Green. Quickly rattling went the empty peasants’ wagons, where sat women and children, and laughed,—shaken by laughing as well as by the rolling of the wagons. Then they came, sheaf-laden, slowly back, creaking homewards. Reapers, both men and women, passed very near Amrie.
She gained of the rich harvest only what her geese, who boldly followed the laden wagons, robbed from their hanging sheaves.
There often comes into men’s souls, with all their joy over the harvested fields and the harvest blessing, a certain timidity. Expectation has become certainty; and where all was so moving and transitory, it is now quiet. The season has changed. Summer has turned to frost.