And, sing your children in poetic strains,
Be it on higher themes
Than robbers, knights, and haunting ghosts."
Roland learned them by heart, and wanted to know more of Goethe.
In their quiet walks Eric repeated to him many of Goethe's poems, in which not man, but nature herself seems to have produced the expression. The towering spirit of Goethe, with Hiawatha and Crassus, was now added to the sedate and unexciting study of Benjamin Franklin.
Roland felt deeply the influence of the various moral and spiritual elements in whose circle he lived: Eric was able to quote apt passages from the classic poets of antiquity, as well as of his own country to his pupil. This revealed to Roland's perception the double manifestation of all life, and made him long for the real and true.
One day, when Eric and Roland were sitting on the boundary of a field, they saw a hare which ate a little, ran off, and then ate again. Roland said,—
"Timid hare! yes, why shouldn't he be timid? he has no weapons of attack or of defence; he can only run away."
Eric nodded, and the boy went on.
"Why are dogs the enemies of hares?"