And thy eyes, those colourless, deep eyes, are speaking too ... and as mute and enigmatic is their speech.
But where is thy Oedipus?
Alas! it’s not enough to don the peasant smock to become thy Oedipus, oh Sphinx of all the Russias!
Dec. 1878.
THE NYMPHS
I stood before a chain of beautiful mountains forming a semicircle. A young, green forest covered them from summit to base.
Limpidly blue above them was the southern sky; on the heights the sunbeams rioted; below, half-hidden in the grass, swift brooks were babbling.
And the old fable came to my mind, how in the first century after Christ’s birth, a Greek ship was sailing on the Aegean Sea.