s opens his eyes among
smiling children, and his own child, now with wings, falls upon his
heart. How quiet is every thing in the dimly lit portico of the second
world, a misty rain of light silvers o'er the bright fields of the
first heaven, and beads of light instead of sparkling dew hang upon
flowers and summits,--the blue of heaven is darker over the lily
plains, all the melodies in the thinner air are but a dispersed
echo,--only night-flowers exhale their scents, and dazzle waving around
calmer glances--here the waving plains rock as in a cradle the crushed
souls, and the lofty billows of life fall gliding apart--then the heart
sleeps, the eye becomes dry, the wish becomes silent. Children flutter
like the hum of bees around the heart which is sunk in earth, and is
still palpitating, and the dream after death represents the earthly
life, as a dream here represents childhood here, magically, soothingly,
softly, and free from care.

Eugenius looked from the moon towards the earth, which for a long
moon-day--equal to two earth-weeks--floated like a thin white cloud
across the blue sky; but he did not recognise his old motherland. At
last the sun set to the moon, and our earth rested, large, glimmering,
and immoveable, on the pure horizon of Elysium, scattering, like a
water-wheel upon a meadow, the flowing beams upon the waving Elysian
garden. He then recognised the earth, upon which he had left a heart
so troubled, in a breast so beloved; and his soul, which reposed in
pleasure, became full of melancholy, and of an infinite longing after
the beloved of his former life, who was suffering below. "Oh, my
Rosamond! why dost thou not leave a sphere, where nothing more loves
thee?" And he cast a supplicating look at the angel of rest, and said:
"Beloved one, take me down from the land of quiet, and lead me to the
faithful soul, that I may see her, and again feel pain, so that she may
not pine alone."

Then his heart began suddenly, as it were, to float without any bounds;
breezes fluttered around him, as though they raised him flying, wafted
him away as they swelled, and veiled him in floods; he sank through the
red evening twilights as through roses, and through the night as
through bowers, and through a damp atmosphere which filled his eye with
drops. Then it seemed as though old dreams of childhood had
returned--then there arose a complaint from the distance, which
re-opened all his closed wounds; the complaint