DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62134#0204
196
AN ART-STUDENT IN MUNICH.
revealing their vernal beauty. I see pale oxlips nori ding
here and there upon mossy banks, and bunches of them lie
withering upon the pathways, gathered farther on in the
Garden by children’s hands, and then dropped. At times,
as the sense of rapidly approaching Spring forces itself upon
my unwilling eyes, most ungratefully do I long that the beau-
tiful unfolding leaves would, for a short, short time, pause in
their unfoldings—would curl themselves up again in their
gummy buds and then’ delicate silky spathes; for all will
have burst in fulness of beauty, and will be over, before
one’s heart has recognised and rejoiced in it, and another
tender, beautiful Spring will be vanished away, like a swift
dream, out of one’s life.
But it is not alone through leaves and blossoms that
Spring announces her advent in the English Garden; she
announces it in many ways, and in none more lovely than
by her gulls. Do not say I am gulling you when I talk of
gulls in the English Garden. The other morning, as I
neared the little bridge crossing the rushing branch of the
Isar, opposite to Prinz Carl’s Palace, not many hundred
yards from the town, and below the very palace windows,
I saw a number of large, white-winged birds, careering
about wildly in the ah’, just over the little bridge. The
Garden resounded with their shrill cries. There must have
been about a hundred of these birds, at the very least.
Now they flapped their broad white wings, till they
gleamed and glanced dazzlingly in the sunlight; now they
poised their quivering grey little bodies in the deep blue
sky, or balanced themselves upon the sparkling green
waves of the rushing waterj then again darted up, up, up
away high into the sky—whirling among the distant leaf-
less trees, like a cloud of white butterflies—their wild cries
echoing joyously, vernally, through the lawns and groves
AN ART-STUDENT IN MUNICH.
revealing their vernal beauty. I see pale oxlips nori ding
here and there upon mossy banks, and bunches of them lie
withering upon the pathways, gathered farther on in the
Garden by children’s hands, and then dropped. At times,
as the sense of rapidly approaching Spring forces itself upon
my unwilling eyes, most ungratefully do I long that the beau-
tiful unfolding leaves would, for a short, short time, pause in
their unfoldings—would curl themselves up again in their
gummy buds and then’ delicate silky spathes; for all will
have burst in fulness of beauty, and will be over, before
one’s heart has recognised and rejoiced in it, and another
tender, beautiful Spring will be vanished away, like a swift
dream, out of one’s life.
But it is not alone through leaves and blossoms that
Spring announces her advent in the English Garden; she
announces it in many ways, and in none more lovely than
by her gulls. Do not say I am gulling you when I talk of
gulls in the English Garden. The other morning, as I
neared the little bridge crossing the rushing branch of the
Isar, opposite to Prinz Carl’s Palace, not many hundred
yards from the town, and below the very palace windows,
I saw a number of large, white-winged birds, careering
about wildly in the ah’, just over the little bridge. The
Garden resounded with their shrill cries. There must have
been about a hundred of these birds, at the very least.
Now they flapped their broad white wings, till they
gleamed and glanced dazzlingly in the sunlight; now they
poised their quivering grey little bodies in the deep blue
sky, or balanced themselves upon the sparkling green
waves of the rushing waterj then again darted up, up, up
away high into the sky—whirling among the distant leaf-
less trees, like a cloud of white butterflies—their wild cries
echoing joyously, vernally, through the lawns and groves