nothing; but when life is as yet an empty mist, canst thou overcome it, or seize it fast and dash it to pieces? Wilt thou one day, thou Uranide, love a man? then will I shrink back from no one. But words are to actions only the sawdust of the club of Hercules, as Schoppe says. So soon as war and freedom clash against each other, then will I deserve thee in the storm of the times, and bring with me to thee actions and immortal love. "Here I stand on the divine heights of the cloister-garden, and look down into a green, heavenly realm which knows no equal. The sun is already away over the gulf, and flings his rose-fire among the ships, and a whole shore full of palaces and full of men burns red. Through the long, wide-extending streets below me rolls up already the din of the festival, and the roofs are full of decorated men and women, and full of music. Balconies and gondolas wait to welcome the divine night with songs. And here am I alone, and am nevertheless so happy, and yearn without pain. But had I been standing here four days ago, Linda, when, as yet, I knew thee not and had thee not, and had I been looking upon such an evening as this,--upon the golden sea,--the gay Portici, upon which sun and sea are rippling with flames,--the majestic Vesuvius, wound round with gold-green myrtles, and with his gray, ashen head full of the glow of the sun,--and, behind me, the green plain full of clouds of flower-dust, which rise out of gardens and rain down in gardens again,--and the whole busy, magic circle of glad energies,--a world swimming in light and life,--then, Linda, without thee, would a cold pang have darted through the warm bliss, and remembrances with mourning masks would have gone about in the golden light of evening. "O Linda, how hast thou cleansed and widened my world, and I am now happy everywhere! Thou hast transformed the heavy, sharp ploughshare of life, which painfully toils at the harvest, into a light brush and pencil, which plays about till it has wrought out a god's form. Have I not seen to-day every temple and every hill more glad, as if gilded by thee, and every beauty, whether it bloomed on a statue, on canvas, on the singing lip, or on the summits, wear a richer lustre, and felt it breathe a richer fragrance? and then did I not fly up from the little flower to the blooming Linda? "How the dark Power holds sway behind the cloud! It gives us sealed orders, that we may break them open at a later time, upon a distant spot. O God! upon Ischia's Epomeo it was for me first to open mine. Then rose a moment over life, and bore eternity; the butterfly brought the goddess!