I love you,
_c'est tout dire_.
BISMARCK.
(I am forgetting the English verses):
"Sad dreams, as when the spirit of our youth
Returns in sleep, sparkling with all the truth
And innocence, once ours, and leads us back
In mournful mockery over the shining track
Of our young life, and points out every ray
Of hope and peace we've lost upon the way!"
By Moore, I think; perhaps Byron.
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Cordial remembrances to your parents and the Reddentin folk.
Schoenhausen, February 23, '47.
_My Angel!_--I shall not send this letter on its way tomorrow, it's
true, but I do want to make use of the few unoccupied minutes left me
to satisfy the need I am conscious of every hour, to communicate with
you, and forthwith to compose a "Sunday letter" to you once more.
Today I have been "on the move" all day long. "The Moorish king rode
up and down," unfortunately not "through Granada's royal town," but
between Havelberg and Jerichow, on foot, in a carriage, and on
horseback, and got mighty cold doing so--because, after the warm
weather of the last few days, I had not made the slightest preparation
to encounter five degrees below freezing, with a cutting north wind,
and was too much in haste or too lazy to mount the stairs again when I
noticed the fresh air. During the night it had been quite endurable
and superb moonlight. A beautiful spectacle it was, too, when the
great fields of ice first set themselves massively in motion, with
explosions like cannon-shots, shattering themselves against one
another; they rear, shoving over and under each other; they pile up
house-high, and sometimes build dams obliquely across the Elbe, in
front of which the pent stream rises until it breaks through them with
rage. Now are they all broken to pieces in the battle--the giants--and
the water very thickly covered with ice-cakes, the largest of which
measure several square rods, which it bears out to the free sea like
shattered chains, with grumbling, clashing noises. This will go on so
for about three days more, unt
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