H. Be quick about it, please, and don't forget
I am at least as dry as he is wet.
C. Oh, very well then, here's your drink.
{171}
H. That's good!
I feel much better now.
C. I thought you would (exit quietly).
H. How beautiful the world is when it breathes
The news of summer!—when the bronzy sheathes
Still hang about the beech-leaf, and the oaks
Are wearing still their dainty tasselled cloaks,
While on the hillside every hawthorn pale
Has taken now her balmy bridal veil,
And, down below, the drowsy murmuring stream
Lulls the warm noonday in an endless dream.
O little brook, far more thou art to me
Than all the pageantry of field and tree:
Es singen wohl die Nixen—ah! 'tis truth—
Tief unten ihren Reih'n—but only Youth
Can hear them joyfully, as once I lay
And heard them singing of the world's highway,
Of wandering ended, and the maiden found,
And golden bread by magic mill-wheel ground.
Lost is the magic now, the wheel is still,
And long ago the maiden left the mill:
Yet once a year, one day, when summer dawns,
The old, old murmur haunts the river-lawns,
The fairies wake, the fairy song is sung,
And for an hour the wanderer's feet are young (he dozes).
C. (returning) Father! I called you twice.
H. I did not know:
Where have you been?
C. Oh, down the stream.
{172}