The merest trifles sometimes rivet the attention in the deepest
misery; the intellect has so little to do with grief. I went up
to look at this mark, which I did not remember ever to have seen
before. As I looked at it, I thought I would go in and lie down
amongst the straw, for I was very weary with running about and
weeping. I opened the door; and there in the cottage sat the old
woman as I had left her, at her spinning-wheel.
"I did not expect you quite so soon," she said, as I shut the
door behind me. I went up to the couch, and threw myself on it
with that fatigue wherewith one awakes from a feverish dream of
hopeless grief.
The old woman sang:
The great sun, benighted,
May faint from the sky;
But love, once uplighted,
Will never more die.
Form, with its brightness,
From eyes will depart:
It walketh, in whiteness,
The halls of the heart.
Ere she had ceased singing, my courage had returned. I started
from the couch, and, without taking leave of the old woman,
opened the door of Sighs, and sprang into what should appear.
I stood in a lordly hall, where, by a blazing fire on the hearth,
sat a lady, waiting, I knew, for some one long desired. A mirror
was near me, but I saw that my form had no place within its
depths, so I feared not that I should be seen.
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