H. C. Andersen

“ The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees, beautiful to the painter's eye; splendid green grass plains lie stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close past, as if it were a river. Large ships with swelling sails, the one high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied numbers.
Come! let us up to Byström's villa; it lies on the stony cliff up there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur: we see from here the whole tripartite city, Södermalm, Nordmalm and the island with that huge palace. ”

“ The carriage, or rather the body of the carriage, stood in its old place, but the swine were gone: they were lords in the forests; rain and drizzle reigned there; the wind tore the leaves off all the trees, and allowed them neither rest nor quiet: the birds of passage were gone.
"The beautiful is past!" said the carriage, and the same sigh passed through the whole of nature, and from the human heart it sounded: "The beautiful is past! with the delightful green forest, with the warm sunshine, and the song of birds—past! ”

“ Scherezade is the victor: the poet is, like her, also a victor. He is rich, victorious—even in his poor chamber, in his most solitary hours. There, in that chamber, rose after rose shoots forth; bubble after bubble sparkles on the magic stream. The heavens shine with shooting stars, as if a new firmament were created, and the old rolled away. The world does not know it, for it is the poet's own creation, richer than the king's costly illuminations. He is happy, as Scherezade is; he is victorious, he is mighty. ”

“ The high road leads up the mountain with short palings on either side, between which we see extensive plains with hops, wild roses, corn-fields, and delightful beech woods, such as are not to be found in any other place in Sweden. The ivy winds itself around old trees and stones—even to the withered trunk green leaves are lent. We look out over the flat, extended woody plain, to the sunlit church-tower of Maristad, which shines like a white sail on the dark green sea: we look out over the Venern Lake, but cannot see its further shore. ”

“ The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a distance there are huts erected, of loose trunks of trees and fresh green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the rain falls faster and faster, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is delightful in the forest. ”

“ The tap-room, where the peasant sits and carouse, is just as finely hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbour everywhere, yet it is most flush in the forest—it extends for miles around. Our road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding or walking. Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and lime. ”

“ We cast another glance over Venern, to Lockö's old palace, to the town of Lendkjobing, and are again near verdant fields and noble trees, that cast their shadows over Blomberg, where, in the garden, the poet Geier's spirit seeks the flower of Kinnakulla in his grand-daughter, little Anna.
The plain expands here behind Kinnakulla; it extends for miles around, towards the horizon. A shower stands in the heavens; the wind has increased: see how the rain falls to the ground like a darkening veil. The branches of the trees lash one another like penitential dryades. ”

“ Thou world's power and glory, thou world's posthumous fame—dust, dust like beauty's rose, laid in the dark earth, where no light shines; thy memorials are but a name, the name but a sound. Away hence, and up on the hill where the wind blows, the sun shines, and the eye looks over the green plain, to the sunlit, dear Upsala, the student's city. ”

“ As the sunlight streams forth over the earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's spirit stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold themselves—endless, inexhaustible, as he is—as the magnet which apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby. As our journey through the forest-scenery here along the extended solitary road, so, travelling on the great high-road of thought, ideas pass through our head. ”

“ The dead are better than us all, and therefore they do not come.
There is earth over the coffin, there is earth within it; the psalm-book with its leaves is dust the rose with all its recollections has gone to dust. But above it bloom new roses, above is sings the nightingale, and the organ plays:—we think of the old grandmother with the mild, eternally young eyes. Eyes can never die! Ours shall once again see her young, and beautiful, as when she for the first time kissed the fresh red rose which is now dust in the grave. ”

“ How touching is the distress of young hearts! It offers itself to us from the mouldy parchment, it resounds in old songs. Beg the grey-haired old dame in the grass turf-house to sing to thee of the young, heavy sorrow, of the saving angel—and the angel came in many shapes. You will hear the song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber, sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him, and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and pleasure in Copenhagen. ”

“ There comes a procession of pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing Moenades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst pines and fragrant birches? ”

“ There the stranger can pass the night, and from his little window look over the falling waters, see them in the clear moonlight, when darkness has laid itself to rest within the thicket of oaks and firs, and all the effect of light is in those foaming, flowing waters, and see them when the morning sun stretches his rainbow in the trembling spray, like an airy bridge of colours, from the shore to the wood-grown rock in the centre of the cataract. ”

“ There is harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large, swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in the firmamental space—as far as the eye sees, as far as science ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.
But if we turn to mankind, for whom we have the highest, the holiest expression; "created in God's image," man, who is able to comprehend and admit in himself all God's creation, the harmony in the harmony then seems to be defective, for at our birth we are all equal! as creatures we have equally "no right to demand;" ”

“ From hence the world's nightingale flew out over distant lands, and proclaimed the purity and holiness of art.
How beautiful it is to look out from the window up here, to look over the water and the Streamparterre to that great, magnificent palace, to Ladegaards land, with the large barracks, to Skipholmen and the rocks that rise straight up from the water, with Södermalm's gardens, villas, streets, and church cupolas between the green trees: the ships lie there together, so many and so close, with their waving flags. The beautiful, that a poet's eye sees, the world may also see! ”

“ Each of the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands. Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden, and for the heart's constant thoughts—young love!
Yes, thy toast is drunk here, and many a beauteous rose has been remembered here with a heartfelt hurra! ”

“ There yet stands a stone outline of Vadstene's rich palace which he erected, with towers and spires, close by the cloister. At a far distance on the Vettern, it looks as if it still stood in all its splendour; near, in moonlight nights, it appears the same unchanged edifice, for the fathom-thick walls yet remain; the carvings over the windows and gates stand forth in light and shade, and the moat round about, which is only separated from the Vettern by the narrow carriage road, takes the reflection of the immense building as a mirrored image. ”

“ The Swedish students came to Copenhagen, and that they might there be known amongst the multitude, the Upsala students wore a white cap with a black rim: this cap is accordingly a memorial,—the sign of friendship's bridge over that river of blood which once flowed between kindred nations. When one meets in heart and spirit, a blissful seed is then sown. Memory's sprite, come to us! we know thee by the cap from Upsala: be thou our guide, and from our more southern home, after years and days, we will make the voyage over again, quicker than if we flew in Doctor Faustus' magic cloak. ”

“ We venture on to the rocking bridge over the streaming, whirling water, and then stand on the little cliff island, between firs and pines, that shoot forth from the crevices. Before us darts a sea of waves, which are broken by the rebound against the stone block where we stand, bathing us with the fine spray. The torrent flows on each side, as if shot out from a gigantic cannon, fall after fall: we look out over them all, and are filled with the harmonic sound, which since time began, has ever been the same. ”

“ On the grave, close under the church-wall, they planted a rose-tree, and it became full of roses, and the nightingale sang over it, and the organ in the church played the finest psalms that were in the book under the dead one's head. And the moon shone straight down on the grave—but the dead was not there: every child could go quietly in the night-time and pluck a rose there by the churchyard-wall. The dead know more than all we living know—the dead know the awe we should feel at something so strange as their coming to us. ”

“ By the canal road between the Venern and Vigen, on the bare, dry rocky plain there stood, like beauty's thistles in that poor landscape, a couple of beggar-boys, so ragged, so tattered, so picturesquely dirty, that we thought we had Callot's originals before us, or that it was an arrangement of some industrious parents, who would awaken the traveller's attention and benevolence. Nature does not form such things: there was something so bold in the hanging on of the rags, that each boy instantly became a Capitano de Baroni. ”

“ Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that which breaks it.
Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in the name of knowledge—immortality. Hear it! the beautiful also bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws of love, as you believe in the laws of sense. ”

“ Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red painted block houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.
Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become confluent and have one bed above Bålstad. They have taken up rivers and lakes in their waters. ”

“ Up here one overlooks both elv and valley; the bank of the river on the other side, rises in green undulating hills, grouped with leafy trees and red-painted wooden houses, which are bounded by rocks and pine forests. Steam-boats and sailing vessels ascend through the sluices; the water itself is the attendant spirit that must bear them up above the rock, and from the forest itself it buzzes, roars and rattles. ”