Page:Tales of humour and romance translated by Holcroft.djvu/220

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196
THE MOON.

mountains. The weary and now glimmeriug sun appeared to Eugenius like the mirror of the moon; he said to his beloved, as the icy summits of the mountains cast their rosy light upon the earth; "I am so weary but yet so well. Shall we feel thus when we awaken out of those two dreams, the dream of life and the dream of death, when we enter the cloudless moon, as the first welcome shore beyond the hurricane of life?" Rosamond replied; "we shall be better, for the moon as thou hast taught me, is the abode of little children, and their parents remain there beside them, till they themselves become meek and calm as infants, and then they proceed further in their course"—"From world to world, from heaven to heaven," said Eugenius with enthusiasm.

As they ascended, the sun sank; but as they proceeded more slowly, the mountain tops appeared like outstretching branches concealing the sun. They then hurried onward amid the decaying glimmer of the evening, and when they reached the mountain-hut, the eternal hills had obscured the monarch of the day—the earth had veiled her graves and cities, paying her adoration to heaven, ere that heaven looked down upon her with its starry eyes, and ere the waterfalls had laid aside their rain-bows,—the earth inclined itself towards the sky, which bent over it with its outstretch-