Merchant (walks up slowly from the left).
The hour of morn, before the sun is up,
When all the branches in the lifeless light
Hang dead and dull, is terrible. I feel
As if I saw the whole world in a frightful
And vacant glass, as dreary as my mind's eye.
O would all flowers might wither! Would my garden
Were poisonous morass, filled to the full
With rotted corpses of these blooming trees,
And my corpse in their midst.
[He is pulling to pieces a blossoming twig,
stops short and drops it.]
Ah, what a fool!
A gray-haired fool, as old as melancholy,
Ridiculous as old! I'll sit me down
And bind up wreaths and weep into the water.
[He walks on a few paces, lifts his hand as
if involuntarily to his heart.]
O how like glass this is, and how the finger
With which fate raps upon it, like to iron!
Years form no rings on men as on the trees,
Nor fashion breast-plates to protect the heart.
[Again he walks a few paces, and so comes
upon the gardener, who takes off his straw
hat; he starts up out of his revery, and
looks inquiringly at the gardener.]
A BRANDENBURG LAKE
From the Painting by Walter Leistikow
Gardener.
Thy servant Sheriar, lord; third gardener I.