Joseph in the Snow and the Clockmaker Vol. I by Berthold Auerbach

Night had followed morning, and morning turned into night, on this day like the previous one. The worthy Pastor required to exercise all his quiet self command, not to give way to the most feverish feelings of distress and anxiety; but just in the same way that he had resisted allowing the alarm bell to be rung except in the greatest extremity, so he now restrained his own feelings. He stood long looking out of the window. In the dead of night the ticking of the pendulum of the church clock was distinctly heard, and the heart of the anxious Pastor vibrated in unison with the swinging pendulum. He had learned the difficult art, in the midst of all the heartfelt sorrow and uneasiness he so keenly felt, to maintain the most perfect outward composure, and to subdue every symptom of passion: even the noblest of all -- that of sympathy for others.

While all those who had remained behind in the village forced themselves to go to work, or sought to divert their thoughts by conversing with each other, and keeping themselves awake by sharing their uneasiness, the Pastor sat alone in his room, looking out of the window, apparently without emotion or noticing any object -- and yet his inward agitation and excitement were great. The villagers, well acquainted with this habit of his, declared that at such moments the Pastor preached a silent sermon to himself; the Pastorin, however, had confided to her father, and to no one else in the world, that on these occasions the Pastor was composing poems, so tender and so aerial that solid words were too substantial for them, and he was content to breathe out his words and thoughts, though he neither wished nor tried to preserve them, by writing down his conceptions.