The garden of the rich merchant. The high wall runs from the right foreground backward toward the left. Steps lead to a small latticed gate in the wall. To the left a winding path is lost among the trees. It is early morning. The shrubs are laden with blossoms, and the meadows are full of flowers. In the foreground the gardener and his wife are engaged in taking delicate blooming shrubs from an open barrow and setting them in prepared holes. GARDENER. The rest are coming now. But no, that is A single man ... The master! WIFE. What? He's up Ere dawn, and yesterday his wedding-day? Alone he walks the garden--that's no man Like other men. GARDENER. Be still, he's coming hither. 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.] [Illustration: A BRANDENBURG LAKE] From the Painting by Walter Leistikow 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.] GARDENER. Thy servant Sheriar, lord; third gardener I. MERCHANT. What? Sheriar, Oh yes. And this thy wife? GARDENER. Aye, lord. MERCHANT. But she is younger far than thou, And once thou cam'st to me to make complaint That she and some young lad,--I can't recall ... GARDENER. It was the donkey-driver. MERCHANT. So I chased Him from my service, and she ran away.