"Now you! now you!" cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the neighbouring land, from the green isle, that Gylfe ploughed from Sweden. "What dear thing do you wish shall happen, or not happen!—tell us the wish!"—"If the oracle speaks well for me," said he, "then I will tell you the silent wish and prayer, with which I bind these knots on the grass straw; but if I have no better success than you have had, I will then be silent!" and he bound straw to straw, and as he bound, he repeated: "it signifies nothing!" He now opened his hand, his eyes shone brighter, his heart beat faster. The straws formed a square! "It will happen, it will happen!" cried the young girls. "What did you wish for?" "That Denmark may soon gain an honourable peace!"
"It will happen! it will happen!" said the young girls; "and when it happens, we will remember that the straws have told it before-hand."
"I will keep these four straws, bound in a prophetic wreath for victory and peace!" said the stranger; "and if the oracle speaks truth, then I will draw the whole picture for you, as we sit here under the hanging birch by the lake, and look on Zäther's blue mountains, each of us binding straw to straw."
A red mark was made in the almanack; it was the 6th of July, 1849. The same day a red page was written in Denmark's history. The Danish soldier made a red, victorious mark with his blood, at the battle of Fredericia.
THE POET'S SYMBOL.
If a man would seek for the symbol of the poet, he need not look farther than "The Arabian Nights' Tales." Scherezade who interprets the stories for the Sultan—Scherezade is the poet, and the Sultan is the public who is to be agreeably entertained, or else he will decapitate Scherezade.
Powerful Sultan! Poor Scherezade!