On me--though guiltless as a child--the throng Flung all their mockery of thy naked being,-- And is the likeness then so very strong? They shouted for _my_ shadow--which, though seeing, They swore they saw not--and, still bent on wrong, Said they were blind; and then put forth their glee in Peals upon peals of laughter! Well--we bear With patience--aye, with joy--the conscience clear. And what--what is the Shadow? may I ask ye, Who am myself so wearyingly asked. Is it too high a problem, then, to task ye? And shall not the malignant world be tasked? The flights of nineteen thousand days unmask ye, They have brought wisdom--in whose trains I basked, And while I gave to shadows, being--saw Being, as shadows, from life's scene withdraw. Give me thy hand, Schlemihl--take mine, my friend: On, on,--we leave the future to the Grey Man, Careless about the world,--our hearts shall blend In firmer, stronger union--come away, man! We shall glide fast and faster towards life's end. Aye! let them smile or scorn, for all they say, man, The tempests will be still'd that shake the deep, And we in part sleep our untroubled sleep. ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO. _Berlin_, _August_, 1834. To Julius Edward Hitzig, from Adelbert von Chamisso. You forget nobody, and surely you must remember one Peter Schlemihl, whom you now and then met at my house in former days; a long-shanked fellow, who had the credit of awkwardness because he was unpolished, and whose negligence gave him an air of habitual laziness. I loved him--you cannot have forgotten, Edward, how often, in the spring-time of our youth, he was the subject of our rhymes. Once I recollect introducing him to a poetical tea-party, where he fell asleep while I was writing, even without waiting to hear anything read. And that brings to my mind a witty thing you said about him; you had often seen him, heaven knows where and when, in an old black _kurtka_, {20} which in fact he always wore, and you declared "he would be a lucky fellow if his soul were half as immortal as his kurtka!" So little did you value him. I loved him, I repeat; and to this Schlemihl, whom I had not seen for many a year, we owe the following sheets. To you, Edward, to you only, my nearest, dearest friend--my better self, from whom I can hide no secret,--to you I commit them; to you only, and of course to Fouque, who, like yourself, is rooted in my soul--but to him as a friend alone, and not as a poet. You can easily imagine, how unpleasant it would be to me, if the secret reposed by an honourable man, confiding in my esteem and sincerity, should be exposed in the pillory of an _epopee_, or in any way distorted, as if some miserable witling had engendered unnatural and impossible things. Indeed, I must frankly own it is a very shame that a history, which another and cleverer hand might have exhibited in all its comic force, has been reduced to mere insipidity by our good man's pen. What