No maiden was by their side!' How do you like that?" "It is very graceful, and pretty. But Uhland seems to leave a great deal to his reader's imagination. All his readers should be poets themselves, or they will hardly comprehend him. I confess, Ihardly understand the passage where he speaks of the castle's stooping downward to the mirrored wave below, and then soaring upward into the gleaming sky. I suppose, however, he wishes to express the momentary illusion we experience at beholding a perfect reflection of an old tower in the sea, and look at it as if it were not a mere shadow in the water; and yet the real tower rises far above, and seems to float in the crimson evening clouds. Is that the meaning?" "I should think it was. To me it is all a beautiful cloud landscape, which I comprehend and feel, and yet should find some difficulty perhaps in explaining." "And why need one always explain? Some feelings are quite untranslatable. No language has yet been found for them. They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet, when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty, all at once; just as glow-worms, which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candlesare lighted, are found to be only worms, like so many others." "Very true. We ought sometimes to be content with feeling. Here, now, is an exquisite piece, which soothes one like the fall of evening shadows,--like the dewy coolness of twilight after a sultry day. I shall not give you a bald translation of my own, because I have laid up in my memory another, which, though not very literal, equals the original in beauty. Observe how finely it commences. "Many a year is in its grave, Since I crossed this restless wave; And the evening, fair as ever, Shines on ruin, rock, and river. "Then, in this same boat, beside, Sat two comrades old and tried; One with all a father's truth, One with all the fire of youth. "One on earth in silence wrought, And his grave in silence sought; But the younger, brighter form Passed in battle and in storm! "So, whene'er I turn my eye Back upon the days gone by, Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me,-- Friends, who closed their course before me. "Yet what binds us, friend to friend, But that soul with soul can blend? Soul-like were those hours of yore; Let us walk in soul once more! "Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee; Take,--I give it willingly; For, invisibly to thee, Spirits twain have crossed with me!" "O, that is beautiful,--'beautiful exceedingly!' Who translated it?" "I do not know. I wish I could find him out. It is certainly admirably done; though in the measure of the original there is something like the rocking motion of a boat, which is not preserved in the translation." "And is Uhland always so soothing and spiritual?"