TWO STORIES
475
of early spring) was sufficient to show a present-day poet most con–
clusively that those enchanting things were, for the time being, ex–
hausted as subjects for poetry and that there was no sense in attempt–
ing to imitate in any way those inexhaustibly full, blessedly living
creations.
At this instant, as the poet's thoughts were on the point of
slipping back into their old, unfruitful groove, he peeped out from
beneath lowered eyelids and perceived, not with his eyes alone, a
luminous fluttering and twinkling, islands of sunshine, reflected
light, shadowy hollows, blue sky touched with white, a flickering
round of dancing lights such as anyone sees when squinting at the
sun, only somehow significant, in some fashion valuable and unique,
transformed through some secret content from simple perception
into an experience. What flashed out here in prismatic hues, fluctu–
ating, receding, undulating and pulsing, was not just a storm of light
from outside whose theater was simply the eye, it was at the same
time life, the impulse surging up from within, and its theater was
the soul, was his own fate. This is the way the poets see, the "seers";
this is the enchanting and shattering fashion in which those who
have been touched by Eros feel. Gone was all thought of Uhland
and Schubert and spring songs; there no longer was an Uhland,
a poetry, a past; everything was the eternal instant, was experience,
was profoundest reality.
In complete submission to this miracle-which he had ex–
perienced before, but for which he thought he had long since for–
feited the capacity and gr.ace-he hovered for unending instants in
timelessness, in a harmony of world and soul, he felt his breath waft
the clouds, he felt the warm sun revolving in
his
breast.
But while he remained surrendered to this strange experience,
his
eyes narrowed and all the gates of sense half closed, for he knew
the propitious current came from within-he became aware of some–
thing close to him on the ground that riveted his attention. It was,
as he realized only slowly and by degrees, a girl's foot, a child's;
it was in a low, brown shoe and it moved firmly and gaily upon the
sand of the walk with the weight on the heel. This little girl's shoe,
the brown of the leather, the childish happy lifting of the little sole,
the span of silk stocking over a delicate ankle, reminded the poet of
something, overwhelmed his heart suddenly and urgently like the
recollection of a profound experience, but he could not find the
