Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/185

185

POETRY AND PROSE.

the air. To-day the light breeze barely fills the sails,
and seems afraid to do more than just what we desire
— then, a mad wind raging and howling as if about to
roll the ship together like a ball and toss it toward the
sky. We have given so many names to the wind to
designate its fickle nature, but the sea is still called
sea, whether it serve us like a timid slave, or sports
with our lives bike a furious tyrant."
  "Man is called man," remarked Hold, "whether he
plays with flowers in childish joy, or piles corpse on
corpse in blind passion, and the transition from one to
the other in the same man is not less surprising than
the change in the sea, and it is fortunate that the
stormy waves in our own breasts have for the most part
little power to do mischief."
  "It is for this reason," said Oswald, "that I think
it best to take the smooth side of life, and keep the
blood as cool as possible. Tempests, either of love or
hate, are no affair of mine. In this way I have man-
aged, so far, to laugh and joke when others grieve them-
selves to death, or are beside themselves with distress or
anger.
    "So life let us cherish !
          Enjoy what we have ;
      Before our frames perish,
          Forgot in the grave."

  "If you were to pine long years in a dungeon, or
were, for years, to be stretched on a bed of pain, do
you think you would then decorate the damp walls with
these lines, or lull your suffering with such a melody ?"
inquired Hold.
  "I am not prepared to say that," replied Oswald,