"'Where is the stream?' cried he, with tears. 'Seest thou
its not in blue waves above us?' He looked up, and lo! the
blue stream was flowing gently over their heads."
--NOVALIS, Heinrich von Ofterdingen.
While these strange events were passing through my mind, I suddenly, as
one awakes to the consciousness that the sea has been moaning by him for
hours, or that the storm has been howling about his window all night,
became aware of the sound of running water near me; and, looking out of
bed, I saw that a large green marble basin, in which I was wont to wash,
and which stood on a low pedestal of the same material in a corner of
my room, was overflowing like a spring; and that a stream of clear water
was running over the carpet, all the length of the room, finding its
outlet I knew not where.
And, stranger still, where this carpet, which
I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered
the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to
wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow; while under the
rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current,
as if they were about to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixed
form, become fluent as the waters.
My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of black
oak, with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carved
in foliage, of which ivy formed the chief part. The nearer end of this
table remained just as it had been, but on the further end a singular
change had commenced. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of
ivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the
next looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just beyond it
a tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle of one of
the drawers.
Hearing next a slight motion above me, I looked up, and saw
that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed were
slightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow next, I thought
it high time to get up; and, springing from the bed, my bare feet
alighted upon a cool green sward; and although I dressed in all haste,
I found myself completing my toilet under the boughs of a great
tree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many
interchanging lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding over
leaf and branch, as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro, like a
sinking sea-wave.