Niels Lyhne by J.P. Jacobsen — Read

It was an evening in spring; the sun threw a red light into the room, as it sank toward the horizon. The wings of the windmill on the embankment drew shadows over the windowpanes and the walls, coming, going, in a monotonous swinging from darkness to light: a moment of darkness, two moments of light.

At the window, Niels Lyhne sat gazing through the darkly burnished elms on the embankment to the fiery clouds beyond. He had been in the country, walking under blossoming beeches, past green rye-fields, over flower-decked meadows. Everything had been so fair and light, the sky so blue, the Sound so bright, the women he met so wondrously beautiful. Singing, he had followed the forest path, but soon the words had died out of his song, then the rhythm was lost, at last the tones were muted, and silence came over him like a fit of giddiness. He closed his eyes, and still he felt how his body drank the light, and his nerves vibrated with it. Every breath he drew of the cool, intoxicating air sent his blood rushing more wildly through the quivering, helpless veins. He felt as though all the teeming, budding, growing, germinating forces of spring were mysteriously striving to vent themselves through him in a mighty cry, and he thirsted for this cry, listened for it, till his listening grew into a vague, turgid longing.