"Beautiful Sorö, encircled by woods!" thy tranquil, cloistered town peeps forth from among thy moss-covered trees; the keen bright eyes of youth gaze from the academy, over the lake, to the busy highway, where the locomotive's dragon snorts, while it is flying through the wood. Sorö, thou poet's pearl, that hast in thy custody the honoured dust of Holberg! like a majestic white swan by the deep lake stands thy far-famed seat of learning. We fix our eyes on it, and then they wander in search of the simple star-flower in the wooded ground--a small house. Pious hymns are chanted there, that echo over the length and breadth of the land; words are uttered there to which the very rustics listen, and hear of Denmark's bygone ages. As the greenwood and the birds' songs belong to each other, so are associated the names of Sorö and INGEMANN.
To Slagelsé! What is the pearl that dazzles us here? The monastery of Antoorskov has vanished, even the last solitary remaining wing, though one old relic still exists--renovated and renovated again--a wooden cross upon the heights above, where, in legendary lore, it is said that HOLY ANDERS, the warrior priest, woke up, borne thither in one night from Jerusalem!
Korsör--there wert thou[9] born, who gave us
"Mirth with melancholy mingled, In stories of 'Knud Sjællandsfar.'"
Thou master of language and of wit! the old decaying ramparts of the deserted fortification are now the last visible mementos of thy childhood's home. When the sun is sinking, their shadows fall upon the spot where stood the house in which thine eyes first opened on the light. From these ramparts, looking towards Sprogös hills, thou sawest, when thou "wert little,"
and sang it in undying verse, as afterwards thou didst sing the mountains of Switzerland; thou, who didst wander through the vast labyrinth of the world, and found that
"Nowhere do the roses seem so red-- Ah! nowhere else the thorn so small appears, And nowhere makes the down so soft a bed, As that where innocence reposed in bygone years!"
Capricious, charming warbler! We will weave a wreath of woodbine. We will cast it into the waves, and they will bear it to Kielerfiord, upon whose coast thine ashes repose. It will bring a greeting from a younger race, a greeting from thy native town, Korsör, where ends the row of pearls.