Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 15

Then came Pollux back with his two quarto leaves, and now set himself at once to his lesson. The very first page composed the melody to Alban's inner songs; but he could neither guess the auth.o.r.ess nor the date of the letter, except further along, by a desultory sort of reading to and fro. The leaves belonged to previous ones; not so much as a grain of writing-sand evinced their recent birth (for Liana was too courtly to use any); further, all the names were disguised; that is to say, Julienne, to whom they were directed, had unfortunately in Argenson's _bureau de decachetage_, where she resided, i.e. at court, demanded them in cipher, and she accordingly took the name of Elisa; Roquairol was called Charles, and Liana her little Linda. Linda, as will be well remembered, is the baptismal name of the young Countess of Romeiro, with whom the Princess on the day of that (for Roquairol) so b.l.o.o.d.y masquerade had established an eternal heart- and letter-alliance; Liana, to whose pure, poetic eyes every n.o.ble woman became a blessed saint and heroine, the opaque jewel a bright, pure, transparent one, loved the high Countess as if with the heart of her brother and her female friend at once, and the gentle soul named herself, unconscious of her worth, only the little Linda of her Elisa.

Nor did Albano recognize the delicate running-hand; Julienne loved the French language even to its letters, but Liana's resembled not the scrawled Gallic protocols, but the neatly-rounded handwriting of the English.

Here is her leaf at last. O thou lovely being! how long have I thirsted for the first sounds of thy refres.h.i.+ng soul!

"Sunday Morning.

"... But to-day, Elisa, I am so profoundly happy, and the evening-mist is transformed to an aurora in heaven. I ought not to give thee yesterday's work at all. I was too much troubled. But might not my dear mother, who had come hither merely for my sake, become thereby still sicker, whatever appearances of tolerable health she might, for that very reason, a.s.sume with me? And then came thy form, beloved one, and all thy sorrow and the painful neighborhood,[86] and our last evening here. O how reproachfully did all that pa.s.s before my heavy heart! So, as we stopped before the house of dear Chariton, and she kissed my mother's hand with tears of joy; then was I so weak that I too turned aside and shed tears, but other tears,--I wept for the rejoicing one herself, who indeed could not know whether at that hour her precious friend in Rome might not be sick or dying.

"But now the dark, gray mist is wholly blown away from the flower-garden of thy little Linda, and all the blossoms of life s.h.i.+ne in their pure, high colors before her. After midnight my mother's headache pa.s.sed almost entirely away, and she was still sleeping so sweetly this morning. O, what were my feelings then! Soon after five o'clock I went down into the garden and shrunk back at the splendor which burned in the dew and between the leaves; the sun was just looking in under the triumphal gates,--all the lakes sparkled in a broad fire,--a gleaming haze floated like a saintly halo around the edge of the earth which the heaven touched,--and a high waving and singing streamed through the splendor of morn.

"And into this unlocked world I had come back restored and so happy. I wanted continually to cry out: 'I have thee again, thou bright sun! and you, ye lovely flowers! and ye proud mountains, ye have not changed! and ye are green again, and, like me, renewed, ye sweet scented trees!' I floated, as if transfigured, in an endless felicity, Elisa, weak, but light and free; I had, so it seemed to me, put off this burdensome clay under the earth and kept only the beating heart, and in my enraptured bosom warm tear-fountains gushed down, as if over flowers, and covered them with brightness.

"'Ah, G.o.d!' said I, trembling at the very greatness of my joy, 'was it then a mere sleep, that immovable repose of mother?' and I must needs (smile on!) before I went further, go up to her again. I crept breathless to the bedside, bent listeningly over her, and my good mother opened slowly her still gently dozing eyes, looked upon me languidly but affectionately, and closed them again without stirring, and gave me only her dear hand.

"Now could I right blissfully return to my garden; I bore, however, a morning-greeting to the ever-cheerful Chariton, and told her that I might be found on the broad way to the _altar_,[87] if I should be wanted for anything. Ah, Elisa, what feelings then were mine! And why had I not thee by the hand, and why could not my distressed Charles see that his sister was so happy? As, after a warm rain, the evening-red and the liquid sunlight run from all the gold-green hills, so stood a quivering splendor over my whole inner being and over my past, and everywhere lay bright tears of joy. A sweet gnawing consumed away my heart as if to death, and all was so near to me and so dear! I could have answered the whispering aspen and thanked the spring-breezes which fanned so coolingly my hot eye! The sun had laid itself with a motherly warmth on my heart, and brooded over us all,--the cold flower, the naked young bird, the stiff b.u.t.terfly, and every creature. Ah, such should man be too, thought I; and I took the sandy path, and spared the life of the poor little blade of gra.s.s and the flower that peeped so lovingly, which truly breathe and wake like us. I drove not away the thirsty white b.u.t.terflies and pigeons which stood beside each other and bent down from the moist turf to drink. O, I could have stroked the waves ... this creation is truly so precious and from G.o.d's hand, and every the smallest-shaped heart has surely its blood and a longing, and into every little eye-point under the leaf the whole sun and a little spring enter and abide!

"I leaned, a little exhausted, under the first triumphal arch, ere I ascended to the altar, and looked out into the glimmering landscape full of villages and orchards and hills; and the glistening dew, and the ringing of the village-bells, and the chime of the herd-bells, and the floating of the birds over all, filled me with peace and light. Yes, in such peace and seclusion and serenity will I spend my fleeting life, thought I: does not the little Sad-cloak persuade me, who, before my eyes, with his wings torn by autumn, nevertheless flutters again around his flowers; and does not the night-b.u.t.terfly admonish me, who clings, chilled, to the hard statue, and cannot soar to the blossoms of day? Therefore will I never stir from my mother; only let the precious Elisa stay with us as long as her Linda lives, and call her n.o.ble friend soon,[88] that I may see and heartily love her!

"I went up the green-shaded mountain, but with pain: joy weakens me so much. Think of me, Elisa: I shall some time die of a great joy or of a great, all too great woe! The spiral path to the altar was painted with the hues of the blossom-dust, and overhead, not colored and stationary, but s.h.i.+fting, burning rainbows quivered through the twigs of the mountain. Why stood I to-day in a splendor such as I never knew before?[89] And when the morning breeze fanned and lifted me, and when I dipped myself deeper into the blue heaven, then said I, 'Now thou art in Elysium.' Then it was to me as if a voice said, 'This is the earthly Elysium, and thou art not yet sanctified for the other.' O, how ardently did I then form the purpose to disentangle myself from so many faults, and especially to renounce that too hasty imagination of offence, which I may indeed conceal from others, but through which I nevertheless injure them. And then I prayed at the altar, and thanked the Eternal Goodness, and wept unconsciously; perhaps too much, but yet without my eyes smarting.

"At last I wrote the poem of thanks which I append to this, and which I will put into verse, if the _pious father_ approves.

"POEM OF THANKS.

"'Do I then gaze again with blessed eyes into thy blooming world, thou All-loving One, and weep again, because I am happy? Why did I then fear?

When I went under the earth in the darkness like the dead, and caught only a distant sound of the loved ones and of spring above me, why was my feeble heart in fear that there was no more hope for life and light?

For thou wast by me in the darkness, and didst lead me up out of the vault into thy spring; and around me stood thy joyous children, and the serene heavens, and all my smiling loved ones! O, I will now hope more steadfastly! Continue thou to break off from the sick plant all rank flowers, that the rest may more fully ripen! Thou dost indeed lead thy human creatures into thy heaven and to thyself over a long mountain; and they go through the storms of life along the mountain, only overshadowed, not smitten, by the clouds, and only our eye grows wet.

But when I come to thee, when Death again throws his dark cloud over me, and draws me away from all that I love into the deeper cavern, and thou, All-gracious, settest me free once more, and bearest me into thy spring,--into a still fairer one than this, which is itself so magnificent,--will then my frail heart, near thy judgment-seat, beat as gladly as to-day, and will the mortal bosom dare to breathe in thy ethereal spring? O, make me pure in this earthly one, and let me live here, as if I were already walking in thy heaven!'"

If even you, ye friends, who have never seen her, are yet won and touched by the patient, pure form, which can resignedly rejoice that the storm-cloud has, after all, only sent down rain-drops upon it, and no hailstones, how must she then have agitated the deeply-moved heart of her friend! He felt a consecration of his whole being, just as if Virtue came down incarnate in this shape from heaven, to hallow him with her smile, and then flew back in a s.h.i.+ning path, and he followed, inspired and exalted, in her track.

He urged the boy instantly to carry back the leaves, in order to spare her and himself--as she might appear any moment--the most painful of surprises; yet he firmly resolved--cost what it might--to be true, and confess to her, this very day, what he had done.

The little fellow ran up stairs and down again, remained a long time before the door, and came in with Liana by the hand, who was dressed in white, with a black veil. She looked in and around a little perplexed, as she with both hands pushed back the veil from her friendly face; but she heard Chariton's lullaby. She did not know him till he spoke; and then her whole beautiful being reddened like an illuminated landscape after an evening shower: she had the pleasure, she said, of knowing his father. Probably she knew the son still better by Julienne's and Augusti's pictures, and on more congenial sides; her sisterly heart was certainly moved, too, by his brotherly voice; for the charm, and even preferableness, of resemblance and copy is so great, that one who looks like even an indifferent person becomes more dear to us, like the echo of an empty sound, merely because, in this case as in the imitative art, the past and absent, s.h.i.+ning through the fancy, become a present.

The gradually lowering tone of the mother's lullaby announced the sinking of the infant to slumber, and at last the diminuendo died away, and Chariton, with glistening eyes, ran to take Liana's hand. A frank and serene friends.h.i.+p bloomed between the innocent hearts, and held them entwined, as the vine does the neighboring poplars. Chariton related to her what Albano had related, with a reliance upon her most fervent sympathy. Liana listened to her friend with eager attention; but that was quite as much as if she were looking at the historical source itself that was so near at hand.

44. CYCLE.

At last they began a journey through the garden. Pollux very reluctantly, and only after Liana's promise to draw him a horse again to-day, stayed behind as patron-saint of the cradle. Alban said, to the extreme joy of the Architect's wife, who could now show the beautiful man everything, that he had seen but little of Lilar yet. How bewitchingly the two forms, linked in friends.h.i.+p, walked before him side by side! Chariton, although a matron, yet of a Grecian slenderness, fluttered along as a younger sister beside the lily-form of her somewhat taller Liana. The former seemed, according to the cla.s.sification of the landscape-painters, nature in motion; Liana, nature in repose. As he joined Liana again, by whose left hand Helena was running along,--the mother on the right,--he found her softly-descending profile indescribably touching, and around the mouth he recognized lines which sorrow had drawn, the scars of returning days; while the lovely maiden, on the sunny side of the front face, as in her easy conversation, manifested a free, benignant cheerfulness, which Albano, who had never knocked at the school-room door of any young ladies' academy, found it hard to reconcile with her tearful poetry. O, if the tear of woman pa.s.ses away lightly, so flutters away still more lightly woman's smile; and the latter, still oftener than the former, is only appearance!

He tried, from a longing of the thirsty heart, to catch the little one's hand, but she hung with both upon Liana's left; presently, however, she skipped away, and plucked three iris-flowers,--which, like her, resembled b.u.t.terflies,--and gave one to her mother, and two to Liana, with the words, "Give _him_ one too!" And Liana handed it to him, lifting her friendly face upon him as she did so with that holy maiden-look which is bright and attentive, but not searching, expressive of childlike sympathy without giving and demanding. Nevertheless, several times during the day did she let those holy eyes sink down; but what compelled her to it was, that on Zesara's rocky face, softened though it was by love, there rested a physiognomical right of the stronger: he seemed to look upon a shy soul with a hundred eyes, and his two true ones blazed as warmly, although quite as purely, as the sun's eye in the ether.

The iris-flowers have this peculiarity, that one smells them, another not; only to these three beings in one did the cups open themselves equally wide, and they rejoiced long over this community of enjoyment.

Helena ran forward and disappeared behind a low bush; she sat on a child's bench by a child's table, awaiting, with a smile, the grown people. The good old Prince had low moss-benches, little garden-chairs, little table- and pot-orangeries, and the like, placed everywhere, for the children, about the resting-places of their elders; for he loved to draw these refres.h.i.+ng open flowers of humanity near to his heart! "One wishes so often," said Liana, "to live in the patriarchal time, or in Arcadia, or in Otaheite; children are, indeed,--do you not believe so?--everywhere the same, and one has already in them what only the most remote time and the most remote region can insure." He indeed believed it, and gladly; but he kept asking himself, How can such an unstained Aphrodite be born out of the dead sea of a court, as pure dew and rain arise out of the briny water of the ocean?

While speaking, she occasionally drew an uncommonly graceful--how shall I write it--_H'm!_ after her words, which, although a grammatical blunder at court, betrayed an unspeakable good nature; but I describe it, not in order that all my fair readers may let this attractive interjection be heard the very next Sunday.

"The same," replied Albano,--but he meant it well,--"holds of the animals: the swan yonder is like the one in Paradise." She took it just as it was meant; but the reason was the pious Father Spener, her teacher; for at Albano's question touching Lilar's abundance of beautiful and gentle creatures, she answered: "The old Lord loved these creatures with a real tenderness, and they could often bring him even to tears. The pious Father thinks so too; he says, since they do everything at G.o.d's behest by instinct, accordingly it seems to him, when he contemplates the care of the parents for their young, just as if the Infinitely Gracious One were doing it all himself." They ascended now a half-shaded bridge, over a long water-mirror hung round with quivering poplars, wherein Liana's emblem, namely, a swan, slept on the water-rings, the bent neck beautifully nestled on the back, the head upon the wing, and gently wafted more by the breezes than by the waves.

"So reposes the innocent soul!" said Alban, and thought, perhaps, of Liana, but without the courage to confess it. "And thus it awakes!"

Liana added with emotion, as this white magnified dove slowly raised its head from the wing; for she thought of her mother's waking on this very day.

Chariton, as if all made up of salient points, was continually turning to Liana, and asking: "Shall we go this way? or in through there? or out through here? If my lord were only here! he knows all about it." She would gladly have led him round every fount and every flower, and looked into the youth's face as lovingly as into that of her friend. Liana said to her, on the cross way at the bridge: "I think the flute-dell yonder, with the gleaming gold ball, will perhaps be pleasantest, especially for a lover of music; and, besides, they will look for me there, when they bring the harp to my mother." She had promised to come back to her as soon as that arrived. She shunned every path toward the south, where Tartarus frowned behind its high curtain.

Liana spoke now of the contest between painting and music, and of Herder's charming official report of this strife. She, although a votary of the pencil, gave in her vote, as was natural to the female and the lyric heart, entirely for tones, and Albano, although a good pianist, was rather for colors, "This magnificent landscape," said Albano, "is in fact a picture, and so is every fair human form." "Were I blind," said Chariton, naively, "then I should not see my lovely Liana." She replied: "My teacher, the Counsellor of Arts, Fraischdorfer, also set painting above music. But to me, when I hear music, it is as if I heard _a loud past_ or _a loud future_. Music has something holy; unlike the other arts, it cannot paint anything but what is good."[90] Verily, she was herself a moral church-music, the angel-stop in the organ. The pure Albano felt, by her side, the necessity and the existence of a yet tenderer purity; and it seemed to him as if a man might injure, even unconsciously, a soul like this, whose understanding was hardly anything more than a finer feeling,--as window-gla.s.ses of pure transparency are often broken, because they appear as if they were not. He turned round mechanically, because he was always one step in advance, and not only the blooming Lilar, but also Liana's full form, shone at once and transfigured into his soul. To clasp her to his heart was not now his yearning, but to s.n.a.t.c.h this being, who had so often suffered, from every flame; to rush for her, sword in hand, upon her foe, to bear her mightily through the deep, cold h.e.l.l-floods of life;--that would have illuminated his existence.

45. CYCLE.

They saw, already, some moist lights, of the high fountains that leaped from above down into the flute-dell, flickering aloft before them, when Liana, contrary to Chariton's expectation, begged them both to go with her into a pathless oak-grove;--she looked upon him so contentedly and open-heartedly as she said it, and without that womanly suspicion of being misunderstood! In the dusky grove rose a wild rock, with the words, "To my friend Zesara." The late Princess had caused this memorial Alp to be erected to Albano's father. Struck, agitated, with smarting eyes the son stood before it, and leaned upon it, as on Gaspard's breast, and pressed his arm up against the sharp stone, and cried, with the deepest emotion, "O thou good father!" His whole youth, and Isola Bella, and the future, fell at once upon a heart which the whole morning had wrought upon, and it could not longer restrain the pressing tears.

Chariton was serious, Liana continued faintly to smile,--but like an angel in prayer. How often, ye fair souls! have I, in this chapter, been compelled to constrain my deeply-impressed heart, which would fain address and disturb you: but I will constrain it again!

They stepped silently back into daylight. But Albano's waves of emotion never fell suddenly; they expanded themselves into broad rings. His eye was not yet dry when he came into the heavenly vale,--into that resting-place of the wishes, where dreams might have gone round freely, without sleep. Chariton--from her earnestness much more busy--had, after a questioning glance at Liana to know whether she might, (namely, let certain machines play,) hastened on before them. They pa.s.sed through the blooming veil, which retired as they approached;--and Albano beheld now the youthful dream of an enchanted valley in Spain, that entangled one in a net of scents and shadows, set out livingly on the earth before him. On the mountains bloomed orange-walks, the stands hidden in the higher terrace,--everything which bears great blossoms on its twigs, from the Linden even to the grape-vine and the apple-tree, drank down below at the brook, or climbed or crowned the two long mountains, which wound, with their blossoms, around the flowers of the low ground, and mutually inclined themselves, to promise an endless valley; fountains placed on the slopes of the mountains threw behind one another silver rainbows over the trees into the brook; in the east burned the gold globe beside the sun,--the last mirror of his dying evening-glance.

"Receive my thanks, thou n.o.ble old man!" Albano was continually repeating.

Liana went with him along the western ridge as far as a bank covered with blossoms, under the arch that fluttered above, where one may survey the first and second windings of the vale, and, over in the north, high pines, and behind them, the spire of a church-tower, and below, an auricula meadow, while Chariton, opposite them on the eastern height, behind a statue of a Muse,--for the Nine Muses beamed from the green Tempe,--seemed to be winding up weights and pressing springs. "My brother," Liana, in a low tone, broke the silence, going on meanwhile with the knitting-work which she had taken from her friend, "wishes very much to see you." The soul of Albano, now awakened with all its holy faculties, felt itself wholly like her, and free from embarra.s.sment, and he said, "Even in my childhood I loved your _Charles_ like a brother; I have as yet no friend." The tenderly-moved souls did not remark that the word Charles came from the letter.

All at once single flute-tones floated up overhead on the mountains and out of the bowers,--more and more continually joined them,--they quivered through each other in a beautiful confusion,--at last flute-choirs broke forth mightily on all sides, like angels, and soared toward heaven;--they proclaimed how sweet is spring, and how joy weeps, and how our heart longs, and then vanished overhead in the blue spring,--and the nightingales flew up from the cool flowers and alighted on the bright tree-tops, and cried joyfully into the triumphal songs of May,--and the fanning of the morning-breeze swayed the lofty, glimmering rainbows to and fro, and threw them far into the flowers.

Liana's work sank out of her hands into her lap, and, in a way peculiar to herself, while she leaned her head forward like a Muse, she cast her eye upward, fixing it upon a dreamy distance; her blue eye glimmered as the blue cloudless ether overflows with soft lightning in the tepid summer-night;--but the youth's spirit blazed up in its emotion, like the sea in a storm. She drew down the black veil,--certainly not against sun and air alone; and Albano, with an inner world pictured on his agitated form, played--a sublime contrast to himself--with the ringlets of the little Helena, whom he had drawn towards him, and looked, with big tears, into her simple, little face, which understood him not.

At this moment the mother came hastening over into the silence, and asked, in a very friendly manner, how he liked it all. His other ecstasies resolved themselves into a commendation of the tones; and the dear Greek herself extolled what she had often heard, more and more strongly, as if it were new to her, and listened most intently with him.

A maiden with the harp looked in through the entering-thicket of the vale, and Liana saw the sign, and rose up. As she was on the point of raising her veil and departing, the great-hearted youth bethought him of his confession: "I have read your to-day's letter,--by heaven, I must say it now!" said he. She drew the veil no higher, and said, with trembling voice, "You surely have not read it! you could not have been in my chamber?" and looked at Chariton. He replied, he had not read it all, but yet a good deal of it; and related in three words a much milder history than Liana could have hoped. "The naughty Pollux!" Chariton kept saying. "O G.o.d, forgive me, I pray you, this sin of ignorance!" said Albano. She threw back the dark veil for a second, and said, with heightened color and downcast look, appeased, perhaps, by her joy at the agreeable disappointment of her worse expectation: "It belonged merely to a female friend; and you will perhaps, if I ask you, not read anything again." And during the fall of the veil her eye looked up soothingly and forgivingly, and with her beloved she slowly departed from him.

O thou holy soul, love my youth! Art thou not the first love of this heart of fire, the morning-star in the early dawn of his life, thou, this good, pure, and tender one? O, the first love of man, the Philomel among the spring-tones of life, is always indeed, because we so err, so hardly treated by Fate, and always killed and buried, but now, if for once, two good souls, in the white-blossomed May of life, bearing the sweet tears of spring in their bosoms, with the glistening buds and hopes of a whole youth, and with the first, unprofaned longing, and with the firstling of life as well as of the year, the forget-me-not of love in their hearts,--if such kindred beings could meet each other and trust each other, and in the blissful month swear a union for all the wintry months of this earthly time; and if each heart could say to the other,--"Hail to me, that I found thee in the holiest season of life, before I had erred; and that I can die and not have loved anyone like thee!"--O Liana! O Zesara! how fortunate must your beautiful souls be!

The youth lingered a few minutes longer in the magic world that was working around him, whose tones and fountains murmured like the waters and machines in the solitary mine; but at last there was something violent in the solitary monotone and glimmer of the valley, wherein he had been left so alone. He hurried on by the nearest way, sprinkled occasionally with veins of water, through the curtain of foliage, and stepped out once more into the free morning earth of Lilar. How strange!

how distant! how changed was all! Into his wide open inner world the outer world poured in with full streams. He himself was changed; he could not go into the night of the oak-grove, to the rocky emblem of his father. When he was over the bridge that stands in the twigs, he saw the gentle company slowly walking over the broad silver-white garden-path, and he blessed Liana, who could now press to her agitated heart the heart of a mother. The little one often whirled round dancing, and perhaps saw him, but no one turned back. The harp, carried along after them, was swept by the eastern breeze, and it s.n.a.t.c.hed tones from the awakened strings as from an aeolian harp, and bore them onward with it; and the youth listened with melancholy to the receding murmur, as of swans that hasten away over the lands, while behind him the empty vale continued to speak lonesomely in the fluting pastoral-songs of love, and hovering tones, gliding along after him, came faintly and dimly to his ear. But he went back up the mountain of the altar; and as he looked over the bright region, and saw still the white forms moving in the distance, he let his whole, beautiful soul dissolve itself in weeping.

And here close we the richest day of his youthful life!

But, ye good beings, who have a heart, and find none, or who have the loved objects only _in_, and not _on_, your bosoms, am I not, like the Greeks, drawing all these pictures of bliss, as it were, on the marble sarcophagi of your changed, slumbering past? Am I not the _Archimime_, who, following after, mimics before you the mouldering forms which your soul has buried? And thou, younger or poorer man, to whom time, instead of a past, has only given a future,--wilt thou not one day say to me, I should have concealed from thee many blessed forms, like holy bodies, for fear thou wouldst wors.h.i.+p them? and wilt thou not add, that, had it not been for these Phoenix-portraits, thou mightst have cherished lighter wishes, and had many fulfilled? And how much pain have I then caused you all! But myself, too; for how could it fare better with me than with the rest of you?

Your conclusion would, accordingly, be this: since you can never really live pleasant days so pleasantly as they s.h.i.+ne afterward in _memory_, or beforehand in _hope_, you would, therefore, rather have the present day without either; and since only at the two poles of the elliptic arch of time one can catch the low music of the spheres, and in the centre of the present nothing, you would, therefore, rather stay and listen in the middle; but as to the past and the future,--neither of which can any man live to see, because they are only two different poesy-gardens of our heart, an Iliad and Odyssey, a Milton's Paradise Lost and Regained,--you will not listen to them at all, or have anything to do with them, in order that you may nestle down, deaf and blind, in an animal present.

By Heaven! sooner give me the finest, strongest poison of ideals, so that I may at least not snore away my moment, but dream it away, and then die on it! But the very dying would be my own fault; for whoso would fain translate _poetic_ dreams into waking reality[91] is more foolish than the North American, who realizes his _nightly_ ones: he proposes, like a Cleopatra, to pervert the splendor of the pearls of dew into a refres.h.i.+ng drink, and the rainbow of fancy to a permanent arch, bridging over the rain-waters. Yes, O G.o.d, Thou wilt and canst give us one day a reality, which shall embody and redouble and satisfy our present ideals,--as thou hast, indeed, already proved to us, in our love here below, which intoxicates us with moments in which the inner becomes the outer, and the Ideal, Reality; but _then_--no, for the Then of the life hereafter, this little _Now_, has no voice; but if, I say, here below fiction could become fact, and our pastoral poetry pastoral life, and every dream a day,--ah, even then would desire still remain enhanced only, not fulfilled: the higher reality would only beget a higher poetry, and higher remembrances and hopes;--in _Arcadia_ we should pine after _Utopia_; and on every sun we should see an unfathomable starry heaven retiring before us, and we should--sigh as we do here!

FOOTNOTES:

[82] They have a whole room for winter quarters, of which in summer the windows are merely thrown open.

[83] Such was the general t.i.tle of the secluded Emeritus, the court preacher, Spener, who resided there, and who was related to the n.o.ble old pious Spener, not only on the paternal side, but also on the spiritual.