The Walk by Robert Walser Page A

die. For him there was no grave with flowers on it. I eluded him, and murmured to myself: “Goodbye, keep well nevertheless, friend Tomzack!”
    Without looking back at the phantom, the pitiful colossus and superman, and candidly I had not the remotest desire to do so, I walked on and soon afterwards, proceeding thus in the warm yielding air and erasing the sad impression which the strange figure of a man, or rather of a giant, had made upon me, I came into a pine forest, through which coiled a smiling, serpentine, and at the same time roguishly graceful path, which I followed with pleasure. Path and forest floor were as a carpet, and here within the forest it was quiet as in a happy human soul, as in the interior of a temple, as in a palace and enchanted dream-wrapped fairy-tale castle, as in Sleeping Beauty’s castle, where all sleep, and all are hushed for centuries of long years. I penetrated deeper, and I speak perhaps a little indulgently if I say that to myself I seemed like a prince withgolden hair, his body clad in warrior’s armour. So solemn was it in the forest that lovely and solemn imaginings, quite of their own accord, took possession of the sensitive walker there. How glad I was at this sweet forest softness and repose! From time to time, from outside, a slight sound or two penetrated the delicious seclusion and bewitching darkness, perhaps a bang, a whistle, or some other noise, whose distant note would only intensify the prevailing soundlessness, which I inhaled to my very heart’s content, and whose virtues I drank and quaffed with due ceremony. Here and there in all this tranquillity and quietude a bird let his blithe voice be heard out of his charmed and holy hiding place. Thus I stood and listened, and suddenly there came upon me an inexpressible feeling for the world, and, together with it, a feeling of gratitude, which broke powerfully out of my soul. The pines stood straight as pillars there, and not the least thing moved in the whole delicate forest, throughout which all kinds of inaudible voices seemed to echo and sound. Music out of the primeval world, from whence I cannot tell, stole on my ear. “Oh, thus, if it must be, shall I then willingly end and die. A memory will then delight me even in the grave, and a gratitude enliven me even in death; a thanksgiving for the pleasures, for the joys, for the ecstasies; a thanksgiving for life, and a joy at joy.” High up, a gentle rustling, whispering down from the treetops, could be heard. “To love and to kiss here must be divinely beautiful,” I told myself. Simply to tread on the pleasant ground became a joy, and the stillness kindled prayers in the feeling soul. “To be dead here, and to lie inconspicuous in the cool forest earth must be sweet. Oh, that one could sense and enjoy death even in death! Perhaps one can. To have a small, quiet grave in the forest would be lovely. Perhaps I should hear the singing of the birds and the forest rustling above me. I would like that.” Marvellous between trunks of oaks a pillar of sunbeams fell intothe forest, which to me seemed like a delicious green grave. Soon I stepped out into the radiant open again, and into life.
    Now there should come, as it emerges here, an inn, and, that is, a very fine, attractive, and coaxing one, an inn situated near the edge of the forest out of which I have this moment walked, an inn with a charming garden full of refreshing shade. The garden should lie on a pretty hill with a good view all around, and right beside it there should stand an extra, artificial hill, or bastion, where one could stay and for quite a long time enjoy the splendid prospect. A glass of beer or wine would also certainly not be unwelcome; but the person who is out walking here recalls just in time that his excursion is not really all that strenuous. The toilsome mountains lie far off in the bluish, luminous, white-misted distance. He must frankly confess that his