Between ten and eleven o'clock the Court Ladies and the
whole staff of Lords of the Bed-chamber, the green colewort and the
Alpine dandelion, and the reader of the Princess rouse themselves out of
their morning sleep; and the whole Palace, considering that the morning
sun gleams so brightly to-day from the lofty sky through the coloured
silk curtains, curtails a little of its slumber.
At twelve o'clock, the Prince: at one, his wife and the carnation have
their eyes open in their flower vase. What awakes late in the afternoon
at four o'clock is only the red-hawkweed, and the night watchman as
cuckoo-clock, and these two only tell the time as evening-clocks and
moon-clocks.
From the eyes of the unfortunate man, who like the jalap plant
(Mirabilia jalapa), first opens them at five o'clock, we will turn our
own in pity aside. It is a rich man who only exchanges the fever fancies
of being pinched with hot pincers for waking pains.
I could never know when it was two o'clock, because at that time,
together with a thousand other stout gentlemen and the yellow mouse-ear,
I always fell asleep; but at three o'clock in the afternoon, and at
three in the morning, I awoke as regularly as though I was a repeater.
Thus we mortals may be a flower-clock for higher beings, when our
flower-leaves close upon our last bed; or sand clocks, when the sand of
our life is so run down that it is renewed in the other world; or
picture-clocks because, when our death-bell here below strikes and
rings, our image steps forth, from its case into the next world.
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