"O friend, how flat and tasteless such a life!
Impulse gives birth to impulse, deed to deed,
Still toilsomely ascending step by step,
Into an unknown realm of dark blue clouds.
What crowns the ascent? Speak, or I go no further.
I need a goal, an aim. I cannot toil,
_Because the steps are here_ in their ascent
Tell me THE END, or I sit still and weep."
"NATURLICHE TOCHTER,"
_Translated by Margaret._
"And so he went onward, ever onward, for twenty-seven
years--then, indeed, he had gone far enough."