And we have been on many thousand lines,
  And we have shown on each, talent and power,
  But hardly have we, for one little hour,
  Been on our own line, have we been ourselves;
  Hardly had skill to utter one of all
  The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
  But they course on forever unexpressed. 
  And long we try in vain to speak and act
  Our hidden self, and what we say and do
  Is eloquent, is well—­but ’tis not true.

  And then we will no more be racked
  With inward striving, and demand
  Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
  Their stupefying power;
  Ah! yes, and they benumb us at our call;
  Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
  From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne,
  As from an infinitely distant land,
  Come airs and floating echoes, and convey
  A melancholy into all our day.

  Only—­but this is rare—­
  When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
  When, jaded with the rush and glare
  Of the interminable hours,
  Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
  When our world-deafened ear
  Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed,—­
  A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
  And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again: 
  The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
  And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know;

  A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
  And, hears its winding murmur, and he sees
  The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

  And there arrives a lull in the hot race
  Wherein he doth forever chase
  That flying and elusive shadow, Rest;
  An air of coolness plays upon his face,
  And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.

  And then he thinks he knows
  The Hills where his life rose,
  And the Sea where it goes. . . . . . .

SIXTH MEMORY.

Early the next morning, there was a knock at the door, and my old doctor, the Hofrath, entered.  He was the friend, the body-and-soul-guardian of our entire little village.  He had seen two generations grow up.  Children whom he had brought into the world had in turn become fathers and mothers, and he treated them as his children.  He himself was unmarried, and even in his old age was strong and handsome to look upon.  I never knew him otherwise than as he stood before me at that time; his clear blue eyes gleaming under the bushy brows, his flowing white hair still full of youthful strength, curling and vigorous.  I can never forget, also, his shoes, with their silver buckles, his white stockings, his brown coat, which always looked new, and yet seemed to be old, and his cane, which was the same I had seen standing by my bedside in childhood, when he felt my pulse and prescribed my medicines.  I had often been sick, but it was always faith in this man which made me well again.  I never had the slightest doubt of his ability to cure me, and when my mother said she must send for the Hofrath that I might get well again, it was as if she had said she must send for the tailor to mend my torn trousers.  I had only to take the medicine, and I felt that I must be well again.