and purer; and between the star and herself there floated a form,
purer than the air, and visible through it: it floated quite close to
her. It was the spirit of the dead Christian priest; he too was coming
to her wedding feast--coming from heaven.
"The glory and brightness yonder outshines everything that is known on
earth!" he said.
And fair Helga begged so fervently, so beseechingly, as she had never
yet prayed, that it might be permitted her to gaze in there for one
single moment, that she might be allowed to cast but a single glance
into the brightness that beamed in the kingdom.
Then he bore her up amid splendour and glory. Not only around her, but
within her, sounded voices and beamed a brightness that words cannot
express.
"Now we must go back; thou wilt be missed," he said.
"Only one more look!" she begged. "But one short minute more!"
"We must go back to the earth. The guests will all depart."
"Only one more look--the last."
And Helga stood again in the verandah; but the marriage lights without
had vanished, and the lamps in the hall were extinguished, and the
storks were gone--nowhere a guest to be seen--no bridegroom--all
seemed to have been swept away in those few short minutes!
Then a great dread came upon her. Alone she went through the empty
great hall into the next chamber. Strange warriors slept yonder. She
opened a side door which led into her own chamber; and, as she thought
to step in there, she suddenly found herself in the garden; but yet it
had not looked thus here before--the sky gleamed red--the morning dawn
was come.
Three minutes only in heaven and a whole night on earth had passed
away!
Then she saw the storks again. She called to them, spoke their
language; and stork-papa turned his head towards her, listened to her
words, and drew near.
"You speak our language," he said; "what do you wish? Why do you
appear here--you, a strange woman?"
"It is I--it is Helga--dost thou not know me? Three minutes ago we
were speaking together yonder in the verandah!"
"That's a mistake," said the stork; "you must have dreamt all that!"
"No, no!" she persisted. And she reminded him of the Viking's castle,
and of the great ocean, and of the journey hither.
Then stork-papa winked with his eyes, and said:
"Why, that's an old story, which I heard from the time of my
great-grandfather. There certainly was here in Egypt a princess of
that kind from the Danish land, but she vanished on the evening of her
wedding-day, many hundred years ago, and never came back! You may read
about it yourself yonder on the monument in the garden; there you'll
find swans and storks sculptured, and at the top you are yourself in
white marble!"
And thus it was. Helga saw it, and understood it, and sank on her
knees.
The sun burst forth in glory; and as, in time of yore, the frog-shape
had vanished in its beams, and the beautiful form had stood displayed,
so now in the light a beauteous form, clearer, purer than air--a beam
of brightness--flew up into heaven!
The body crumbled to dust; and a faded lotos-flower lay on the spot
where Helga had stood.
* * * * *
"Well, that's a new ending to the story," said stork-papa. "I had
certainly not expected it. But I like it very well."
"But what will the young ones say to it?" said stork-mamma.
"Yes, certainly, that's the important point," replied he.
THE LAST DREAM OF THE OLD OAK TREE.
A CHRISTMAS TALE.
In the forest, high up on the steep shore, hard by the open sea coast,
stood a very old oak tree. It was exactly three hundred and sixty-five
years old, but that long time was not more for the tree than just as
many days would be to us men. We wake by day and sleep through the
night, and then we have our dreams: it is different with the tree,
which keeps awake through three seasons of the year, and does not get
its sleep till winter comes. Winter is its time for rest, its night
after the long day which is called spring, summer, and autumn.
On many a warm summer day the Ephemera, the fly that lives but for a
day, had danced around his crown--had lived, enjoyed, and felt happy;
and then rested for a moment in quiet bliss the tiny creature, on one
of the great fresh oak leaves; and then the tree always said:
"Poor little thing! Your whole life is but a single day! How very
short! It's quite melancholy!"
"Melancholy! Why do you say that?" the Ephemera would then always
reply. "It's wonderfully bright, warm, and beautiful all around me,
and that makes me rejoice!"
"But only one day, and then it's all done!"
"Done!" repeated the Ephemera. "What's the meaning of _done_? Are you
_done_, too?"
"No; I shall perhaps live for thousands of your days, and my day is
whole seasons long! It's something so long, that you can't at all
manage to reckon it out."
"No? then I don't understand you. You say you have thousands of my
days; but I have thousands of moments, in which I can be merry and
happy. Does all the beauty of this world cease when you die?"
"No," replied the Tree; "it will certainly last much longer--far
longer than I can possibly think."
"Well, then, we have the same time, only that we reckon differently."
And the Ephemera danced and floated in the air, and rejoiced in her
delicate wings of gauze and velvet, and rejoiced in the balmy breezes
laden with the fragrance of meadows and of wild roses and
elder-flowers, of the garden hedges, wild thyme, and mint, and
daisies; the scent of these was all so strong that the Ephemera was
almost intoxicated. The day was long and beautiful, full of joy and of
sweet feeling, and when the sun sank low the little fly felt very
agreeably tired of all its happiness and enjoyment. The delicate wings
would not carry it any more, and quietly and slowly it glided down
upon the soft grass blade, nodded its head as well as it could nod,
and went quietly to sleep--and was dead.
"Poor little Ephemera!" said the Oak. "That was a terribly short
life!"
And on every summer day the same dance was repeated, the same question
and answer, and the same sleep. The same thing was repeated through
whole generations of ephemera, and all of them felt equally merry and
equally happy.
The Oak stood there awake through the spring morning, the noon of
summer, and the evening of autumn; and its time of rest, its night,
was coming on apace. Winter was approaching.
Already the storms were singing their "good night, good night!" Here
fell a leaf, and there fell a leaf.
"We'll rock you, and dandle you! Go to sleep, go to sleep! We sing you
to sleep, we shake you to sleep, but it does you good in your old
twigs, does it not? They seem to crack for very joy! Sleep sweetly,
sleep sweetly! It's your three hundred and sixty-fifth night. Properly
speaking, you're only a stripling as yet! Sleep sweetly! The clouds
strew down snow, there will be quite a coverlet, warm and protecting,
around your feet. Sweet sleep to you, and pleasant dreams!"
And the Oak Tree stood there, denuded of all its leaves, to sleep
through the long winter, and to dream many a dream, always about
something that had happened to it, just as in the dreams of men.
The great Oak had once been small--indeed, an acorn had been its
cradle. According to human computation, it was now in its fourth
century. It was the greatest and best tree in the forest; its crown
towered far above all the other trees, and could be descried from
afar across the sea, so that it served as a landmark to the sailors:
the tree had no idea how many eyes were in the habit of seeking it.
High up in its green summit the wood-pigeon built her nest, and the
cuckoo sat in its boughs, and sang his song; and in autumn, when the
leaves looked like thin plates of copper, the birds of passage came
and rested there, before they flew away across the sea; but now it was
winter, and the tree stood there leafless, so that every one could see
how gnarled and crooked the branches were that shot forth from its
trunk. Crows and rooks came and took their seat by turns in the
boughs, and spoke of the hard times which were beginning, and of the
difficulty of getting a living in winter.
It was just at the holy Christmas time, when the tree dreamed its most
glorious dream.
The tree had a distinct feeling of the festive time, and fancied he
heard the bells ringing from the churches all around; and yet it
seemed as if it were a fine summer's day, mild and warm. Fresh and
green he spread out his mighty crown; the sunbeams played among the
twigs and the leaves; the air was full of the fragrance of herbs and
blossoms; gay butterflies chased each other to and fro. The ephemeral
insects danced as if all the world were created merely for them to
dance and be merry in. All that the tree had experienced for years and
years, and that had happened around him, seemed to pass by him again,
as in a festive pageant. He saw the knights of ancient days ride by
with their noble dames on gallant steeds, with plumes waving in their
bonnets and falcons on their wrists. The hunting horn sounded, and the
dogs barked. He saw hostile warriors in coloured jerkins and with
shining weapons, with spear and halbert, pitching their tents and
striking them again. The watch-fires flamed up anew, and men sang and
slept under the branches of the tree. He saw loving couples meeting
near his trunk, happily, in the moonshine; and they cut the initials
of their names in the grey-green bark of his stem. Once--but long
years had rolled by since then--citherns and AEolian harps had been
hung up on his boughs by merry wanderers, now they hung there again,
and once again they sounded in tones of marvellous sweetness. The
wood-pigeons cooed, as if they were telling what the tree felt in all
this, and the cuckoo called out to tell him how many summer days he
had yet to live.
Then it appeared to him as if new life were rippling down into the
remotest fibre of his root, and mounting up into his highest branches,
to the tops of the leaves. The tree felt that he was stretching and
spreading himself, and through his root he felt that there was life
and motion even in the ground itself. He felt his strength increase,
he grew higher, his stem shot up unceasingly, and he grew more and
more, his crown became fuller, and spread out; and in proportion as
the tree grew, he felt his happiness increase, and his joyous hope
that he should reach even higher--quite up to the warm brilliant sun.
[Illustration: THE LOVERS AT THE OLD OAK TREE.]
Already had he grown high above the clouds, which floated past beneath
his crown like dark troops of passage-birds, or like great white
swans. And every leaf of the tree had the gift of sight, as if it had
eyes wherewith to see; the stars became visible in broad daylight,
great and sparkling; each of them sparkled like a pair of eyes, mild
and clear. They recalled to his memory well-known gentle eyes, eyes of
children, eyes of lovers who had met beneath his boughs.
It was a marvellous spectacle, and one full of happiness and joy! And
yet amid all this happiness the tree felt a longing, a yearning desire
that all other trees of the wood beneath him, and all the bushes, and
herbs, and flowers, might be able to rise with him, that they too
might see this splendour, and experience this joy. The great majestic
oak was not quite happy in his happiness, while he had not them all,
great and little, about him; and this feeling of yearning trembled
through his every twig, through his every leaf, warmly and fervently
as through a human heart.
The crown of the tree waved to and fro, as if he sought something in
his silent longing, and he looked down. Then he felt the fragrance of
thyme, and soon afterwards the more powerful scent of honeysuckle and
violets; and he fancied he heard the cuckoo answering him.
Yes, through the clouds the green summits of the forest came peering
up, and under himself the Oak saw the other trees, as they grew and
raised themselves aloft. Bushes and herbs shot up high, and some tore
themselves up bodily by the roots to rise the quicker. The birch was
the quickest of all. Like a white streak of lightning, its slender
stem shot upwards in a zigzag line, and the branches spread around it
like green gauze and like banners; the whole woodland natives, even to
the brown plumed rushes, grew up with the rest, and the birds came
too, and sang; and on the grass blade that fluttered aloft like a long
silken ribbon into the air, sat the grasshopper cleaning his wings
with his leg; the May beetles hummed, and the bees murmured, and every
bird sang in his appointed manner; all was song and sound of gladness
up into the high heaven.
"But the little blue flower by the water-side, where is that?" said
the Oak; "and the purple bell-flower and the daisy?" for, you see, the
old Oak Tree wanted to have them all about him.
"We are here--we are here!" was shouted and sung in reply.
"But the beautiful thyme of last summer--and in the last year there
was certainly a place here covered with lilies of the valley! and the
wild apple tree that blossomed so splendidly! and all the glory of the
wood that came year by year--if that had only just been born, it might
have been here now!"
"We are here, we are here!" replied voices still higher in the air. It
seemed as if they had flown on before.
"Why, that is beautiful, indescribably beautiful!" exclaimed the old
Oak Tree, rejoicingly. "I have them all around me, great and small;
not one has been forgotten! How can so much happiness be imagined? How
can it be possible?"
"In heaven, in the better land, it can be imagined, and it is
possible!" the reply sounded through the air.
And the old tree, who grew on and on, felt how his roots were tearing
themselves free from the ground.
"That's right, that's better than all!" said the tree. "Now no fetters
hold me! I can fly up now, to the very highest, in glory and in light!
And all my beloved ones are with me, great and small--all of them,
all!"
That was the dream of the old Oak Tree; and while he dreamt thus a
mighty storm came rushing over land and sea--at the holy Christmas
tide. The sea rolled great billows towards the shore; there was a
cracking and crashing in the tree--his root was torn out of the ground
in the very moment while he was dreaming that his root freed itself
from the earth. He fell. His three hundred and sixty-five years were
now as the single day of the Ephemera.
On the morning of the Christmas festival, when the sun rose, the storm
had subsided. From all the churches sounded the festive bells, and
from every hearth, even from the smallest hut, arose the smoke in blue
clouds, like the smoke from the altars of the druids of old at the
feast of thanks offerings. The sea became gradually calm, and on board
a great ship in the offing, that had fought successfully with the
tempest, all the flags were displayed, as a token of joy suitable to
the festive day.
"The tree is down--the old Oak Tree, our landmark on the coast!" said
the sailors. "It fell in the storm of last night. Who can replace it?
No one can."
This was the funeral oration, short but well meant, that was given to
the tree, which lay stretched on the snowy covering on the sea shore;
and over its prostrate form sounded the notes of a song from the ship,
a carol of the joys of Christmas, and of the redemption of the soul of
man by His blood, and of eternal life.
"Sing, sing aloud, this blessed morn--
It is fulfilled--and He is born,
Oh, joy without compare!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
Thus sounded the old psalm tune, and every one on board the ship felt
lifted up in his own way, through the song and the prayer, just as the
old tree had felt lifted up in its last, its most beauteous dream in
the Christmas night.
THE BELL-DEEP.
"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" It sounds up from the "bell-deep," in the
Odense-Au. Every child in the old town of Odense, on the island of
Fuenen, knows the Au, which washes the gardens round about the town,
and flows on under the wooden bridges from the dam to the water-mill.
In the Au grow the yellow water-lilies and brown feathery reeds; the
dark velvety flag grows there, high and thick; old, decayed willows,
slanting and tottering, hang far out over the stream beside the monks'
meadow and by the bleaching-ground; but opposite there are gardens
upon gardens, each different from the rest, some with pretty flowers
and bowers like little dolls' pleasure-grounds, often displaying only
cabbage and other kitchen plants; and here and there the gardens
cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread
themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming
waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom.
Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the
"bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann."
This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon the
water; but in starry and moonlit nights he shows himself. He is very
old: grandmother says that she has heard her own grandmother tell of
him; he is said to lead a solitary life, and to have nobody with whom
he can converse save the great old church bell. Once the bell hung in
the church tower; but now there is no trace left of the tower or of
the church, which was called St. Alban's.
"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" sounded the bell, when the tower still stood
there; and one evening, while the sun was setting, and the bell was
swinging away bravely, it broke loose and came flying down through the
air, the brilliant metal shining in the ruddy beam.
"Ding-dong! ding-dong! Now I'll retire to rest!" sang the bell, and
flew down into the Odense-Au where it is deepest; and that is why the
place is called the "bell-deep." But the bell got neither rest nor
sleep. Down in the Au-mann's haunt it sounds and rings, so that the
tones sometimes pierce upward through the waters; and many people
maintain that its strains forebode the death of some one; but that is
not true, for then the bell is only talking with the Au-mann, who is
now no longer alone.
And what is the bell telling? It is old, very old, as we have already
observed; it was there long before grandmother's grandmother was born;
and yet it is but a child in comparison with the Au-mann, who is an
old quiet personage, an oddity, with his hose of eel-skin, and his
scaly jacket with the yellow lilies for buttons, and a wreath of reed
in his hair and seaweed in his beard; but he looks very pretty for all
that.
[Illustration: THE AU-MANN LISTENING TO THE BELL.]
What the bell tells? To repeat it all would require years and days;
for year by year it is telling the old stories, sometimes short ones,
sometimes long ones, according to its whim; it tells of old times, of
the dark hard times, thus:
"In the church of St. Alban, the monk mounted up into the tower. He
was young and handsome, but thoughtful exceedingly. He looked through
the loophole out upon the Odense-Au, when the bed of the water was yet
broad, and the monks' meadow was still a lake; he looked out over it,
and over the rampart, and over the nuns' hill opposite, where the
convent lay, and the light gleamed forth from the nun's cell; he had
known the nun right well, and he thought of her, and his heart beat
quicker as he thought. Ding-dong! ding-dong!"
Yes, this was the story the bell told.
"Into the tower came also the dapper man-servant of the bishop; and
when I, the bell, who am made of metal, rang hard and loud, and swung
to and fro, I might have beaten out his brains. He sat down close
under me, and played with two little sticks as if they had been a
stringed instrument; and he sang to it. 'Now I may sing it out aloud,
though at other times I may not whisper it. I may sing of everything
that is kept concealed behind lock and bars. Yonder it is cold and
wet. The rats are eating her up alive! Nobody knows of it! Nobody
hears of it! Not even now, for the bell is ringing and singing its
loud Ding-dong! ding-dong.'
"There was a king in those days; they called him Canute. He bowed
himself before bishop and monk; but when he offended the free peasants
with heavy taxes and hard words, they seized their weapons and put him
to flight like a wild beast. He sought shelter in the church, and shut
gate and door behind him. The violent band surrounded the church; I
heard tell of it. The crows, ravens, and magpies started up in terror
at the yelling and shouting that sounded around. They flew into the
tower and out again, they looked down upon the throng below, and they
also looked into the windows of the church, and screamed out aloud
what they saw there. King Canute knelt before the altar in prayer, his
brothers Eric and Benedict stood by him as a guard with drawn swords;
but the king's servant, the treacherous Blake, betrayed his master;
the throng in front of the church knew where they could hit the king,
and one of them flung a stone through a pane of glass, and the king
lay there dead! The cries and screams of the savage horde and of the
birds sounded through the air, and I joined in it also; for I sang
'Ding-dong! ding-dong!'
"The church bell hangs high and looks far around, and sees the birds
around it, and understands their language; the wind roars in upon it
through windows and loopholes; and the wind knows everything, for he
gets it from the air, which encircles all things, and the church bell
understands his tongue, and rings it out into the world, 'Ding-dong!
ding-dong!'
"But it was too much for me to hear and to know; I was not able any
longer to ring it out. I became so tired, so heavy, that the beam
broke, and I flew out into the gleaming Au where the water is
deepest, and where the Au-mann lives, solitary and alone; and year by
year I tell him what I have heard and what I know. Ding-dong!
ding-dong!"
Thus it sounds complainingly out of the bell-deep in the Odense-Au:
that is what grandmother told us.
But the schoolmaster says that there was not any bell that rung down
there, for that it could not do so; and that no Au-mann dwelt yonder,
for there was no Au-mann at all! And when all the other church bells
are sounding sweetly, he says that it is not really the bells that are
sounding, but that it is the air itself which sends forth the notes;
and grandmother said to us that the bell itself said it was the air
who told it him, consequently they are agreed on that point, and this
much is sure. "Be cautious, cautious, and take good heed to thyself,"
they both say.
The air knows everything. It is around us, it is in us, it talks of
our thoughts and of our deeds, and it speaks longer of them than does
the bell down in the depths of the Odense-Au where the Au-mann dwells;
it rings it out into the vault of heaven, far, far out, for ever and
ever, till the heaven bells sound "Ding-dong! ding-dong!"
THE PUPPET SHOWMAN.
On board the steamer was an elderly man with such a merry face that,
if it did not belie him, he must have been the happiest fellow in
creation. And, indeed, he declared he was the happiest man; I heard it
out of his own mouth. He was a Dane, a travelling theatre director. He
had all his company with him in a large box, for he was proprietor of
a puppet-show. His inborn cheerfulness, he said, had been _purified_
by a Polytechnic candidate, and the experiment had made him completely
happy. I did not at first understand all this, but afterwards he
explained the whole story to me, and here it is. He told me:
[Illustration: THE ANIMATED PUPPETS.]