He placed his elbows on the wall and
stared at the tree; it looked as if the leaves were running in a fine
rain down the limbs. He believed, that he was hearing the sound which
the foliage produced. Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became
audible quite near by:
"Flower in dew! Flower in dew!
Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own.
Does in them lie the same strange air
The same wonderful elfin air,
As in mine own?
Are they filled with whispers and sobbing and sighing
Amid radiance slumbering and fragrances dying,
Amid trembling ringing, amid rising singing:
In longing,
In longing,
I live."
Then silence fell again. Mogens diew a long breath and listened
intently: no more singing; up in the house a door was heard. Now he
clearly heard the sound from the leaves of the silver poplar. He bowed
his head in his arms and wept.
The next day was one of those in which late summer is rich. A day with
a brisk, cool wind, with many large swiftly flying clouds, with
everlasting alternations of darkness and light, according as the
clouds drift past the sun. Mogens had gone up to the cemetery, the
garden of the manor abutted on it. Up there it looked rather barren,
the grass had recently been cut; behind an old quadrangular iron-fence
stood a wide-spreading, low elder with waving foliage. Some of the graves
had wooden frames around them, most were only low, quadrangular hills;
a few of them had metal-pieces with inscriptions on them, others
wooden crosses from which the colors had peeled, others had wax
wreaths, the greater number had nothing at all.
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