d in a perfect chord of
fragrance. He saw nothing but the Blue Flower.

Long and tenderly he gazed at it, with unspeakable love. At last he felt
that he must go a little nearer to it, when suddenly it began to move
and change. The leaves glistened more brightly, and drew themselves up
closely around the swiftly growing stalk. The flower bent itself toward
him, and the petals showed a blue, spreading necklace of sapphires,
out of which the lovely face of a girl smiled softly into his eyes. His
sweet astonishment grew with the wondrous transformation.

All at once he heard his mother's voice calling him, and awoke in his
parents' room, already flooded with the gold of the morning sun.

From the German of Novalis.

THE SOURCE

I

In the middle of the land that is called by its inhabitants Koorma, and
by strangers the Land of the Half-forgotten, I was toiling all day long
through heavy sand and grass as hard as wire. Suddenly, toward evening,
I came upon a place where a gate opened in the wall of mountains, and
the plain ran in through the gate, making a little bay of level country
among the hills.

Now this bay was not brown and hard and dry, like the mountains above
me, neither was it covered with tawny billows of sand like the desert
along the edge of which I had wearily coasted. But the surface of it was
smooth and green; and as the winds of twilight breathed across it they
were followed by soft waves of verdure, with silvery turnings of the
under sides of many leaves, like ripples on a quiet harbour. There were
fields of corn, filled with silken rustling, and vineyards with long
rows of trimmed maple-trees standing each one like an emerald goblet
wreathed with vines, and flower-gardens as bright as if the earth
had been embroidered with threads of blue and scarlet and gold, and
olive-orchards frosted over with delicate and fragrant blossoms.
Red-roofed cottages were scattered everywhere through the sea of
greenery, and in the centre, like a white ship surrounded by a flock of
little boats, rested a small, fair, shining city.

I wondered greatly how this beauty had come into being on the border of
the desert. Passing through the fields and gardens and orchards, I found
that they were all encircled and lined with channels full of running
water. I followed up one of the smaller channels until it came to a
larger stream, and as I walked on beside it, still going upward, it
guided me into the midst of the ci