DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62134#0083
THE SAGA-SEIRIT OF NATURE.
75
Fair, and then on to the Castle. I leave you to imagine
the beauty of the scene from the Castle terrace, where we
watched the sunset. The town and plain, and winding
river, and distant Haardt mountains half veiled by violet
haze; the castle rising from amid the gorgeous autumn
tints of coral and gold which sobered the red tone of the
castle into a warm grey, and telling dark against the sun-
set sky, which was crimson and amber and lemon colour
gradating into pale azure, and flecked with sombre clouds
of dusky grey and dove-colour. I never saw the castle
look more magnificent; and all was solemn and gorgeous,
and full of a mournful poetry.
As we returned through the town, Isabel had a peep
through a window into a students’ Kneip, where we saw
them all jollify drinking and playing at cards, with
statuettes of Goethe and Schiller, and other poets, arranged
round the room. It was a capital bit of German student-
fife !
We were advised the next morning not to go up the
Neckar in the little steamer; but I was obstinate, and we
went. It was a dull morning, and the silence, the gloom,
the mournfulness of the day, harmonized wonderfully with
the scenery. Those round, swelling hills, crowned with
their forests, now gorgeous with autumn colouring,—that
swollen river up which we slowly progressed,—the absence
of all human and animal life on the banks,—had a solemn
influence upon the mind. I could have believed that our
spirits had flown back into long past ages, and that this was
the day on which Siegfried was stabbed whilst hunting
amid these hills; that his sad, beautiful corpse yet lay
beneath some of the old oaks with crimson and yellow
leaves falling upon it, or was borne mournfully by his
friends home through these solitudes upon its bier of
branches, and that the trees, and the sky, and the rivers—all
75
Fair, and then on to the Castle. I leave you to imagine
the beauty of the scene from the Castle terrace, where we
watched the sunset. The town and plain, and winding
river, and distant Haardt mountains half veiled by violet
haze; the castle rising from amid the gorgeous autumn
tints of coral and gold which sobered the red tone of the
castle into a warm grey, and telling dark against the sun-
set sky, which was crimson and amber and lemon colour
gradating into pale azure, and flecked with sombre clouds
of dusky grey and dove-colour. I never saw the castle
look more magnificent; and all was solemn and gorgeous,
and full of a mournful poetry.
As we returned through the town, Isabel had a peep
through a window into a students’ Kneip, where we saw
them all jollify drinking and playing at cards, with
statuettes of Goethe and Schiller, and other poets, arranged
round the room. It was a capital bit of German student-
fife !
We were advised the next morning not to go up the
Neckar in the little steamer; but I was obstinate, and we
went. It was a dull morning, and the silence, the gloom,
the mournfulness of the day, harmonized wonderfully with
the scenery. Those round, swelling hills, crowned with
their forests, now gorgeous with autumn colouring,—that
swollen river up which we slowly progressed,—the absence
of all human and animal life on the banks,—had a solemn
influence upon the mind. I could have believed that our
spirits had flown back into long past ages, and that this was
the day on which Siegfried was stabbed whilst hunting
amid these hills; that his sad, beautiful corpse yet lay
beneath some of the old oaks with crimson and yellow
leaves falling upon it, or was borne mournfully by his
friends home through these solitudes upon its bier of
branches, and that the trees, and the sky, and the rivers—all