I saw the empty husks fall by the hundred before the wind.
I followed up the streams in the wood to their sources. For a while a
rivulet oozed slowly along. Then came a little fall, and it began to
speak, to gurgle and murmur; but only at this one place, and here it
seemed to me to be like a young man or woman of twenty. Now that I, who
in my boyhood's days had gone for botanical excursions with my master
and school-fellows, absorbed myself in every plant, from greatest to
least, without wishing to arrange or classify any, it seemed as though
an infinite wisdom in Nature were being revealed to me for the first
time.
As near to Copenhagen as Soendermarken, stood the beech, with its curly
leaves and black velvet buds in their silk jackets. In the gardens of
Frederiksberg Avenue, the elder exhaled its fragrance, but was soon
over; the hawthorn sprang out in all its splendour. I was struck by the
loveliness of the chestnut blooms. When the blossom on the cherry-trees
had withered, the lilac was out, and the apple and pear-trees paraded
their gala dress.
It interested me to notice how the colour sometimes indicated the shape,
sometimes produced designs quite independently of it. I loitered in
gardens to feast my eyes on the charming grouping of the rhubarb leaves
no less than on the exuberance of their flowers, and the leaves of the
scorzonera attracted my attention, because they all grew in one plane,
but swung about like lances.
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