In youth one must mingle one’s own personality with life, that they may become one. But the reason of this is, that you have never lived, you have never tasted life, you have never enjoyed it in great wholesome draughts, as it ought to be enjoyed. “‘You are a dreamer,’ they went on to say to him, ‘and that’s your misfortune. He certainly had friends, young artists, like himself, young in spirit, young in hopes and thoughts they told him he was rich in talent, and an artist, but that he was foolish for having no faith in his own power for he always broke what he had fashioned out of clay, and never completed anything and a work must be completed if it is to be seen and to bring money. Once it had been a temple a young sculptor now dwelt there. But, for all that, everything great and splendid was not seen and known. Art was recognized and honored, and was rewarded also.
Even the Pope paid homage to these two, and honored them with a visit. In Rome lived the greatest painter in the world, Raphael there also dwelt the first of sculptors, Michael Angelo. Holy Church was there, and art was held as a high and holy thing. Then already the palace of the Caesars was a ruin, as it is now fig trees and laurels grew among the fallen marble columns, and in the desolate bathing-halls, where the gilding still clings to the wall the Coliseum was a gigantic ruin the church bells sounded, the incense sent up its fragrant cloud, and through the streets marched processions with flaming tapers and glowing canopies. Much has been changed there in the course of time, but the changes have not come so quickly as the change from youth to old age. It was in the city of the Popes, in the world-city, Rome. “A short time ago”-the Star’s “short time ago” is called among men “centuries ago”-“my rays followed a young artist.
His rays tremble on the white wall, as if he wished to write down on it what he can tell, what he has seen there and elsewhere during thousands of years in our rolling world. In the fresh morning dawn, in the rosy air gleams a great Star, the brightest Star of the morning.
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