"I cover my blushing cheeks with the funeral veil. My secret lies hidden in my heart, and will be laid with it under the grave-stone. But after a year it will force its way out of the mouldered heart. O, then let it rest forever in thine, Clotilda!--and forever in thine, Julius!--Julius, was not a silent form often about thee that called itself thy angel? Did it not once, as the death-bell tolled for the burial of a blooming maiden, lay a white hyacinth in thy hand, and say, Angels pluck such _white_ flowers? Did not a mute form once take thy hand and wipe away its tears therewith, and it could not tell why it wept? Did not a low voice once say, Farewell, I shall no more appear to thee, I go back to heaven? That form was I, O Julius; for I have loved thee and even unto death. Lo! here I stand on the shore of the second world, but I look not over into its infinite fields, but I turn my face, while I am still sinking, back to thee, to thee, and my eye grows dim over thy image.--Now I have told thee all.--Now come, quieting death, crush slowly the white hyacinth, and rend the heart asunder speedily, that Julius may see the love enclosed therein.--Ah, wilt thou then take a dead one into thy soul? Wilt thou weep, when thou hearest this read? Ah, when my covered, sunken dust can no more touch thee, will my remote spirit be loved by thine?--But I conjure thee, O ever-remembered one, go, on the day when this tearful leaf is read to thee, then go, at sundown, up to my grave and offer to the pale face below, which the old mound is already crushing asunder, and to the dissolved heart that can beat for nothing more, then present to the poor heart that has loved thee so much, and on thy account has hid itself under the earth, thy funeral offering,--bring to it on thy flute the tones of my loved song, 'The grave is deep and silent.'--Sing it softly to the accompaniment, Clotilda, and thou too visit me.--Ah, poor Giulia, lift up thy soul, and sink not now, as thou imaginest thy Julius on thy grave!--When thou bringest thy offering to the dead, my spirit will, it is true, already have gone up higher; I shall have lived a year beyond the earth, I shall already have forgotten the earth,--but nevertheless, but, O God, if Thou shouldst let the tones above my grave penetrate into Elysium, then should I sink down and shed hot tears and stretch out my arms and cry: Yes! here in eternity I love him still,--may it fare well with him on the earth, may his soft heart repose softly and long on life below there!--No, not long! Come up hither, mortal, to the Immortals, that thine eye may be healed, and see the friend who died for thee! "GIULIA." * * * * *