"I too come out gladly under the fair new-year's dawn, which gleams through all the clouds, and flames up the high hemisphere of heaven. In a year I shall look into the sin from another world: O how my heart, for this last time, under the earthly cloud, overflows with love toward the Father of this fair earth, toward his children and my brothers and sisters, toward this flowery cradle, wherein we only once awake, and amidst its rocking in the sun only once fall asleep! "I shall never live to see another summer-day, therefore will I describe the fairest one, on which, with thy Julius[3] I for the first time tremblingly penetrated through luminous clouds, and through harmonies, and fell down with him before a thundering throne, and said to him, 'Overhead, in the immeasurable cloud which they call eternity, He dwells, who has made us and loves us.' This day will I to-day repeat in my soul; and never, too, may it be extinguished in my Julius or my Horion! "I have often said to my Julius, 'I have not yet given thee the greatest thought of man, which bows down his soul and yet erects it again forever; but I will name it to thee on the day when thy spirit and mine are the purest, or when I die.' Hence he often begged me, when _his angel_ had been with him, or when the flute and the awe-inspiring night or a tempest had exalted him, 'Name to me, Emanuel, the greatest thought of man!' "It was a sweet July evening, when my beloved one lay on my bosom, weeping, under the birch-tree on the mountain, and said: 'Tell me why I weep so very much this evening? Dost thou, then, never do it, Emanuel? But there fall also warm drops from the clouds on my cheeks.' I answered: 'There are little warm clouds that float round in heaven, and shake out a few dew-drops; but does not the angel walk up and down in thy soul? For thou stretchest out thy hand to touch him.' Julius said: 'Yes, he stands before my thoughts; but it was only thou that I wanted to touch: for the angel indeed is gone from the earth, and I long right earnestly for his voice. Dreamy shapes undulate into each other within me, but they have no such bright colors as in sleep,--gracious, smiling faces look upon me, and come up to me with outspread, shadowy arms, and beckon to my soul, and melt away, ere I can press them to my heart.[4] My Emanuel, is not thy face, then, one among my shadowy forms?' Here he pressed his wet face glowingly to mine, which seemed to hover before him in shadowy outline; a cloud sprinkled the consecrating water of heaven upon our embrace, and I said: 'We are softened so to-day only by that which encircles us, and which I now see.'--He answered: 'O, tell me what thou seest, and leave not off till the sun is gone down.'