And the earth passed away like a summer night.
I awoke, and instead of the cloud there was a green meadow around me, and above me glittered the stars. The first night of summer had followed the last night of spring. The moon was rising like a silver bow in the ghostly air. And in the north the sunset colors of the spring were changing upon the mountain-tops into the morning glow of the summer. My heart still clung to the eternal stars, where now awake I lingered in my dream, and I sighed, "Alas! each day above is the beginning of spring." Then I heard the voice in me repeat the old words, "Child of man, sacrifice time to eternity,"--and I sighed no more.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1]: I need not tell any one that the valley itself is situated in the departments of the Upper Pyrenees.
[Footnote 2]: It is well known that the Symplegadian rocks continually dashed against each other, and destroyed every passing ship, until Orpheus's lyre subdued and tranquillized them.
[Footnote 3]: Alluding to a painting by Reynolds, in which Garrick, invited by both Muses, follows Thalia.
[Footnote 4]: A kind of jelly-fish.
[Footnote 5]: Ten drops of this instantly sweeten half a pound of sour beer.
[Footnote 6]: The cave is twenty feet high, but the entrance only five feet.
[Footnote 7]: French miles. The valley is about two German miles--ten English miles--long.