"...the Dryad disappeared, lifted to the cheerful freshness above. She saw a glittering portal open, that led to a little garden, where all was brightness and dance music. Beautiful weeping willows, real products of spring, hung their fresh branches over these lakes like a fresh, green, transparent, and yet screening veil. In the bushes burnt an open fire, throwing a red twilight over the quiet huts of branches, into which the sounds of music penetrated—an ear tickling, intoxicating music, that sent the blood coursing through the veins.

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Beautiful girls in festive attire, with pleasant smiles on their lips, and the light spirit of youth in their hearts flitted to and fro in the wild dance. Where were the heads, where the feet? As if stung by tarantulas, they sprang, laughed, rejoiced, as if in their ecstacies they were going to embrace all the world.

The Dryad felt herself torn with them into the whirl of the dance. Round her delicate foot clung the silken boot, chestnut brown in color, like the ribbon that floated from her hair down upon her bare shoulders. The green silk dress waved in large folds, but did not entirely hide the pretty foot and ankle.

A wild joviality seemed to rush through the Dryad. Her partner stretched out his arms to draw her to him, but he embraced only the empty air.

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The Dryad had been carried away, like a rose-leaf on the wind. Before her she saw a flame in the air. The beacon light shone from the goal of her longing. Thither she was carried by the wind, like butterfly that had come too early, and that now sank down dying." -from The Dryad, or The Wood Nymph, by Hans Christian Andersen