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"I know not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. I have never attached any great value to poetical fame; and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a sword; for I was a brave soldier in the Liberation War of humanity."
A vision of the conquering Ernest, attended by "eight-and-twenty noble and pleasant females, marching two and two, half naked, each holding a torch in one hand and a laurel-wreath in the other," now swept before the dreamer's eyes.
In the Scales, one holds the cross high in the air while the other is weighed down by Apollo's laurel-wreath and the bolts of Zeus; in short, our standard displays everything that is most dear to the soul of a Greek or that fills him with devotion. Above all, Nike hovers with the crown of victory.
The hero who, on the battle- field, trembled not before the balls which whizzed about his head, had a violent dislike to those insect-stings of critics who, like wasps humming round about the laurel-wreath on his brow, ever found between the leaves of his fame some place where with their stings they could wound him, and who was as sensitive as a young blameless maiden would be against the wasp-stings of slander.
"The world will learn the cause of my ruin, and condemn you," said Gotzkowsky. "Go, take all that I have; I will reserve nothing; I despise riches and estate. I wish to be poor; for in poverty is peace. I turn my back upon this house, and I take nothing with me but this laurel-wreath and you, my children." Smilingly he gave his hands to Bertram and Elise.
But that line of defence he voluntarily abandons, knowing in his heart, as he said, that the present social order could not endure, and that all beauty it preserved was not to be counted against its horror. It is at the end of the same preface that the well-known passage occurs, thus translated by Matthew Arnold: "I know not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should one day be laid on my coffin.
So saying, she rose to her feet and putting off the laurel-wreath, set it reverently on the head of Filomena, whom first herself and after all the other ladies and the young men likewise saluted as queen, cheerfully submitting themselves to her governance.
You have set of crown of thorns upon the head of your beloved, I would bind a laurel-crown upon the beautiful brow of my Corilla, which will not wound her head, and will not cause her to die of grief. You are not willing to aid me in this, my work? You refuse me this laurel-wreath because you have only martyr-crowns to dispose of?
"Ah! should the future ever place upon these brows the laurel-wreath due to one who has saved his country, what joy, what recompence, to lay it at thy feet! Yes, it is these thoughts that have inspired me, when sterner ones have shrunk back appalled from the spectres that surround their goal.
He is prouder of a court-livery than of a laurel-wreath; and is only sure of having established his claims to respectability by having sacrificed those of independence. He is a retainer to the Muses; a door-keeper to learning; a lacquey in the state.
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