Ch. 11 - Diurgaerden - Page 2

thinks of a _pose_ arranged by a ballet-master.

Let us, however, see what is pretty. The little Cupid-seller is
pretty, and the stone is made as flexible as life in the waists of the
bathing-women. One of them, as she steps out, feels the water with her
feet, and we feel, with her, a sensation that the water is cold. The
coolness of the marble-hall realizes this feeling. Let us go out into
the sunshine, and up to the neighbouring cliff, which rises above the
mansions and houses. Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices
in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and
the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze
bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that
Scandinavian improvisatore. Here he lay in the grass, composed and
sang his anacreontic songs, and here, in the summer-time, his annual
festival is held. We will raise his altar here in the red evening
sunlight. It is a flaming bowl, raised high on the jolly tun, and it
is wreathed with roses. Morits tries his hunting-horn, that which was
Oberon's horn in the inn-parlour, and everything danced, from Ulla to
"Mutter paa Toppen:"[M] they stamped with their feet and clapped their
hands, and clinked the pewter lid of the ale-tankard; "hej kara Sjæl!
fukta din aske!" (Hey! dear soul! moisten your clay).

[Footnote M: The landlady of an alehouse.]

A Teniers' picture became animated, and still lives in song. Morits
blows the horn on Bellmann's place around the flowing bowl, and whole
crowds dance in a circle, young and old; the carriages too, horses and
waggons, filled bottles and clattering tankards: the Bellmann
dithyrambic clangs melodiously; humour and low life, sadness--and
amongst others, about

"----hur ögat gret
Ved de Cypresser, som ströddes."[N]

[Footnote N: How the eyes wept by the cypresses that were strewn
around.]

Painter, seize thy brush and palette and paint the Maenade--but not
her who treads the winebag, whilst her hair flutters in the wind, and
she sings ecstatic songs. No, but the Maenade that ascends from
Bellmann's steaming bowl is the Punch's Anadyomene--she, with the high
heels to the red shoes, with rosettes on her gown and with fluttering
veil and mantilla--fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose
of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks
with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about
breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible
that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce
to us the human heart's sadness and hope.