“I will remain and listen,” said the host.
“This must be a masterpiece!” exclaimed Otto,”—a true masterpiece, since all are so delighted with it.”
“It is Baggesen himself; and truly as he must sing in that world where everything mortal is ennobled.”
“‘Meadows all fragrance, the strongholds of pleasure,
Heaven blue streamlets,
That speed through the green woods in musical measure,’” began Otto, and the spiritual battle-piece with beauty and tone developed itself more and more; they found themselves in the midst of the winter camp of the Muses, where the poet with
...“lyre on his shoulder and sword at....
Hastened to fight with the foes of the Muses.” Otto’s gloomy look won during the perusal a more animated expression. “Excellent!” exclaimed he; “this is what I myself have thought and felt, but, alas! have been unable to express.”
“I am a strange girl,” said Sophie; “whenever I read a new poet of distinguished talent, I consider that he is the greatest. It was so with Byron and Victor Hugo. ‘Cain’ overwhelmed me, ‘Notre Dame’ carried me away with it. Once I could imagine no greater poet than Walter Scott, and yet I forget him over Oehlenschläger; yes, I remember a time when Heiberg’s vaudevilles took almost the first place among my chosen favorites. Thus I know myself and my changeable disposition, and yet I firmly believe that I shall make an exception with this work. Other poets showed me the objects of the outer world, this one shows me my own mind: my own thoughts, my own being he presents before me, and therefore I shall always take the same interest in the Ghost’s Letters.”
“They are true food for the mind,” said Otto; “they are as words in season; there must be movement in the lake, otherwise it will become a bog.”
“The author is severe toward those whom he has introduced,” said the lady; “but he carries, so to say, a sweet knife. A wound from a sharp sword-blade is not so painful as that from a rusty, notched knife.”