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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Phantastes, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Phantastes
+       A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Release Date: July 8, 2008 [EBook #325]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHANTASTES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mike Lough
+
+
+
+
+
+PHANTASTES
+
+A FAERIE ROMANCE FOR MEN AND WOMEN
+
+
+By George Macdonald
+
+
+A new Edition, with thirty-three new Illustrations by Arthur Hughes;
+edited by Greville MacDonald
+
+
+     "In good sooth, my masters, this is no door.
+      Yet is it a little window, that looketh upon a great world."
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  THE MEETING OF SIR GALAHAD AND SIX PERCIVALE
+  SUDDENLY THERE STOOD ON THE THRESHOLD A TINY WOMAN-FORM
+  THE BRANCHES AND LEAVES ON THE CURTAINS OF MY BED WERE IN MOTION
+  I SAW A COUNTRY MAIDEN COMING TOWARDS ME
+  TAILPIECE TO CHAPTER III
+  HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER IV
+  TWO LARGE SOFT ARMS WERE THROWN AROUND ME FROM BEHIND
+  I GAZED AFTER HER IN A KIND OF DESPAIR
+  I FOUND MYSELF IN A LITTLE CAVE
+  THE ASH SHUDDERED AND GROANED
+  TAILPIECE TO CHAPTER VI
+  I COULD HARDLY BELIEVE THAT THERE WAS A FAIRY LAND
+  I DID NOT BELIEVE IN FAIRY LAND
+  A RUNNER WITH GHOSTLY FEET
+  THE MAIDEN CAME ALONG, SINGING AND DANCING,HAPPY AS A CHILD
+  THE GOBLINS PERFORMED THE MOST ANTIC HOMAGE
+  THE FAIRY PALACE IN THE MOONLIGHT
+  TOO DAZZLING FOR EARTHLY EYES
+  IN THE WOODS AND ALONG THE RIVER BANKS DO THE MAIDENS GO LOOKING
+       FOR CHILDREN
+  SHE LAY WITH CLOSED EYES, WHENCE TWO TEARS WERE FAST WELLING
+  HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER XIV
+  I SPRANG TO HER, AND LAID MY HAND ON THE HARP
+  A WHITE FIGURE GLEAMED PAST ME, WRINGING HER HANDS
+  THEY ALL RUSHED UPON ME, AND HELD ME TIGHT
+  A WINTRY SEA, BARE, AND WASTE, AND GRAY
+  SHOW ME THE CHILD THOU CALLEST MINE
+  THE TIME PASSED AWAY IN WORK AND SONG
+  HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER XXI
+  WE REACHED THE PALACE OF THE KING
+  I SAW, LEANING AGAINST THE TREE, A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
+  FASTENED TO THE SADDLE, WAS THE BODY OF A GREAT DRAGON
+  I WAS DEAD, AND RIGHT CONTENT
+  A VALLEY LAY BENEATH ME
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+For offering this new edition of my father's Phantastes, my reasons
+are three. The first is to rescue the work from an edition illustrated
+without the author's sanction, and so unsuitably that all lovers of the
+book must have experienced some real grief in turning its pages. With
+the copyright I secured also the whole of that edition and turned it
+into pulp.
+
+My second reason is to pay a small tribute to my father by way of
+personal gratitude for this, his first prose work, which was published
+nearly fifty years ago. Though unknown to many lovers of his greater
+writings, none of these has exceeded it in imaginative insight and power
+of expression. To me it rings with the dominant chord of his life's
+purpose and work.
+
+My third reason is that wider knowledge and love of the book should
+be made possible. To this end I have been most happy in the help of my
+father's old friend, who has illustrated the book. I know of no other
+living artist who is capable of portraying the spirit of Phantastes;
+and every reader of this edition will, I believe, feel that the
+illustrations are a part of the romance, and will gain through them
+some perception of the brotherhood between George MacDonald and Arthur
+Hughes.
+
+GREVILLE MACDONALD.
+
+September 1905.
+
+
+
+
+
+PHANTASTES A FAERIE ROMANCE
+
+
+    "Phantastes from 'their fount all shapes deriving,
+    In new habiliments can quickly dight."
+                            FLETCHER'S Purple Island
+
+
+     Es lassen sich Erzählungen ohne Zusammenhang, jedoch mit
+     Association, wie Träume, denken; Gedichte, die bloss
+     wohlklingend und voll schöner Worte sind, aber auch ohne
+     allen Sinn und Zusammenhang, höchstens einzelne Strophen
+     verständlich, wie Bruchstücke aus den verschiedenartigsten
+     Dingen. Diese wahre Poesie kann höchstens einen
+     allegorischen Sinn in Grossen, und eine indirecte Wirkung,
+     wie Musik, haben. Darum ist die Natur so rein poetisch, wie
+     die Stube eines Zauberers, eines Physikers, eine
+     Kinderstube, eine Polter- und Vorrathskammer.
+
+     Ein Märchen ist wie ein Traumbild ohne Zusammenhang. Ein
+     Ensemble wunderbarer Dinge und Begebenheiten, z. B. eine
+     musikalische Phantasie, die harmonischen Folgen einer
+     Aeolsharfe, die Natur selbst...
+
+     In einem echten Märchen muss alles wunderbar, geheimnissvoll
+     und zusammenhängend sein; alles belebt, jeder auf eine
+     andere Art. Die ganze Natur muss wunderlich mit der ganzen
+     Geisterwelt gemischt sein; hier tritt die Zeit der Anarchie,
+     der Gesetzlosigkeit, Freiheit, der Naturstand der Natur, die
+     Zeit von der Welt ein . . . Die Welt des Märchens ist die,
+     der Welt der Wahrheit durchaus entgegengesetzte, und eben
+     darum ihr so durchaus ähnlich, wie das Chaos der vollendeten
+     Schöpfung ähnlich ist.--NOVALIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+                       "A spirit  .  .  .
+                    .  .  .  .  .  .
+    The undulating and silent well,
+    And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom,
+    Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
+    Held commune with him; as if he and it
+    Were all that was."
+                            SHELLEY'S Alastor.
+
+
+I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies
+the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the eastern
+window of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour, dividing a cloud that
+just rose above the low swell of the horizon, announced the approach of
+the sun. As my thoughts, which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep had
+dissolved, began again to assume crystalline forms, the strange events
+of the foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wondering
+consciousness. The day before had been my one-and-twentieth birthday.
+Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal rights, the keys of an
+old secretary, in which my father had kept his private papers, had been
+delivered up to me. As soon as I was left alone, I ordered lights in the
+chamber where the secretary stood, the first lights that had been there
+for many a year; for, since my father's death, the room had been left
+undisturbed. But, as if the darkness had been too long an inmate to
+be easily expelled, and had dyed with blackness the walls to which,
+bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to light up the
+gloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker shadows into the hollows
+of the deep-wrought cornice. All the further portions of the room lay
+shrouded in a mystery whose deepest folds were gathered around the dark
+oak cabinet which I now approached with a strange mingling of reverence
+and curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to
+the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its fossil
+remains charred by passion and petrified by tears. Perhaps I was to
+learn how my father, whose personal history was unknown to me, had woven
+his web of story; how he had found the world, and how the world had left
+him. Perhaps I was to find only the records of lands and moneys, how
+gotten and how secured; coming down from strange men, and through
+troublous times, to me, who knew little or nothing of them all. To solve
+my speculations, and to dispel the awe which was fast gathering around
+me as if the dead were drawing near, I approached the secretary; and
+having found the key that fitted the upper portion, I opened it with
+some difficulty, drew near it a heavy high-backed chair, and sat down
+before a multitude of little drawers and slides and pigeon-holes. But
+the door of a little cupboard in the centre especially attracted my
+interest, as if there lay the secret of this long-hidden world. Its key
+I found.
+
+One of the rusty hinges cracked and broke as I opened the door: it
+revealed a number of small pigeon-holes. These, however, being but
+shallow compared with the depth of those around the little cupboard, the
+outer ones reaching to the back of the desk, I concluded that there
+must be some accessible space behind; and found, indeed, that they were
+formed in a separate framework, which admitted of the whole being pulled
+out in one piece. Behind, I found a sort of flexible portcullis of small
+bars of wood laid close together horizontally. After long search, and
+trying many ways to move it, I discovered at last a scarcely projecting
+point of steel on one side. I pressed this repeatedly and hard with
+the point of an old tool that was lying near, till at length it
+yielded inwards; and the little slide, flying up suddenly, disclosed a
+chamber--empty, except that in one corner lay a little heap of withered
+rose-leaves, whose long-lived scent had long since departed; and, in
+another, a small packet of papers, tied with a bit of ribbon, whose
+colour had gone with the rose-scent. Almost fearing to touch them, they
+witnessed so mutely to the law of oblivion, I leaned back in my chair,
+and regarded them for a moment; when suddenly there stood on the
+threshold of the little chamber, as though she had just emerged from its
+depth, a tiny woman-form, as perfect in shape as if she had been a small
+Greek statuette roused to life and motion. Her dress was of a kind that
+could never grow old-fashioned, because it was simply natural: a robe
+plaited in a band around the neck, and confined by a belt about the
+waist, descended to her feet. It was only afterwards, however, that I
+took notice of her dress, although my surprise was by no means of so
+overpowering a degree as such an apparition might naturally be expected
+to excite. Seeing, however, as I suppose, some astonishment in my
+countenance, she came forward within a yard of me, and said, in a voice
+that strangely recalled a sensation of twilight, and reedy river banks,
+and a low wind, even in this deathly room:--
+
+"Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?"
+
+"No," said I; "and indeed I hardly believe I do now."
+
+"Ah! that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first
+time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of
+what you consider in itself unbelievable. I am not going to argue with
+you, however, but to grant you a wish."
+
+ Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech,
+of which, however, I had no cause to repent--
+
+"How can such a very little creature as you grant or refuse anything?"
+
+"Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty years?"
+said she. "Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a mere matter of
+relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does not feel altogether
+insignificant, though to others you do look small beside your old Uncle
+Ralph, who rises above you a great half-foot at least. But size is of so
+little consequence with old me, that I may as well accommodate myself to
+your foolish prejudices."
+
+So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she stood a
+tall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes. Her dark hair
+flowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her waist, and against it her
+form stood clear in its robe of white.
+
+"Now," said she, "you will believe me."
+
+Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now perceive, and
+drawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as incomprehensible, I
+suppose I stretched out my arms towards her, for she drew back a step or
+two, and said--
+
+"Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides, I was
+two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve; and a man
+must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know."
+
+"But you are not my grandmother," said I.
+
+"How do you know that?" she retorted. "I dare say you know something of
+your great-grandfathers a good deal further back than that; but you know
+very little about your great-grandmothers on either side. Now, to the
+point. Your little sister was reading a fairy-tale to you last night."
+
+"She was."
+
+"When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, 'Is there a
+fairy-country, brother?' You replied with a sigh, 'I suppose there is,
+if one could find the way into it.'"
+
+"I did; but I meant something quite different from what you seem to
+think."
+
+"Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into Fairy Land
+to-morrow. Now look in my eyes."
+
+Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I remembered
+somehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I looked deeper and
+deeper, till they spread around me like seas, and I sank in their
+waters. I forgot all the rest, till I found myself at the window, whose
+gloomy curtains were withdrawn, and where I stood gazing on a whole
+heaven of stars, small and sparkling in the moonlight. Below lay a sea,
+still as death and hoary in the moon, sweeping into bays and around
+capes and islands, away, away, I knew not whither. Alas! it was no
+sea, but a low bog burnished by the moon. "Surely there is such a sea
+somewhere!" said I to myself. A low sweet voice beside me replied--
+
+"In Fairy Land, Anodos."
+
+I turned, but saw no one. I closed the secretary, and went to my own
+room, and to bed.
+
+All this I recalled as I lay with half-closed eyes. I was soon to find
+the truth of the lady's promise, that this day I should discover the
+road into Fairy Land.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     "'Where is the stream?' cried he, with tears. 'Seest thou
+     its not in blue waves above us?' He looked up, and lo! the
+     blue stream was flowing gently over their heads."
+     --NOVALIS, Heinrich von Ofterdingen.
+
+While these strange events were passing through my mind, I suddenly, as
+one awakes to the consciousness that the sea has been moaning by him for
+hours, or that the storm has been howling about his window all night,
+became aware of the sound of running water near me; and, looking out of
+bed, I saw that a large green marble basin, in which I was wont to wash,
+and which stood on a low pedestal of the same material in a corner of
+my room, was overflowing like a spring; and that a stream of clear water
+was running over the carpet, all the length of the room, finding its
+outlet I knew not where. And, stranger still, where this carpet, which
+I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered
+the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to
+wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow; while under the
+rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current,
+as if they were about to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixed
+form, become fluent as the waters.
+
+My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of black
+oak, with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carved
+in foliage, of which ivy formed the chief part. The nearer end of this
+table remained just as it had been, but on the further end a singular
+change had commenced. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of
+ivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the
+next looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just beyond it
+a tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle of one of
+the drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I looked up, and saw
+that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed were
+slightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow next, I thought
+it high time to get up; and, springing from the bed, my bare feet
+alighted upon a cool green sward; and although I dressed in all haste,
+I found myself completing my toilet under the boughs of a great
+tree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many
+interchanging lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding over
+leaf and branch, as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro, like a
+sinking sea-wave.
+
+After washing as well as I could in the clear stream, I rose and looked
+around me. The tree under which I seemed to have lain all night was one
+of the advanced guard of a dense forest, towards which the rivulet ran.
+Faint traces of a footpath, much overgrown with grass and moss, and with
+here and there a pimpernel even, were discernible along the right bank.
+"This," thought I, "must surely be the path into Fairy Land, which
+the lady of last night promised I should so soon find." I crossed the
+rivulet, and accompanied it, keeping the footpath on its right bank,
+until it led me, as I expected, into the wood. Here I left it, without
+any good reason: and with a vague feeling that I ought to have followed
+its course, I took a more southerly direction.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+            "Man doth usurp all space,
+             Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in
+                    the face.
+             Never thine eyes behold a tree;
+             'Tis no sea thou seest in the sea,
+             'Tis but a disguised humanity.
+             To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;
+             All that interests a man, is man."
+                                        HENRY SUTTON.
+
+The trees, which were far apart where I entered, giving free passage
+to the level rays of the sun, closed rapidly as I advanced, so that ere
+long their crowded stems barred the sunlight out, forming as it were a
+thick grating between me and the East. I seemed to be advancing towards
+a second midnight. In the midst of the intervening twilight, however,
+before I entered what appeared to be the darkest portion of the forest,
+I saw a country maiden coming towards me from its very depths. She did
+not seem to observe me, for she was apparently intent upon a bunch of
+wild flowers which she carried in her hand. I could hardly see her face;
+for, though she came direct towards me, she never looked up. But when we
+met, instead of passing, she turned and walked alongside of me for a few
+yards, still keeping her face downwards, and busied with her flowers.
+She spoke rapidly, however, all the time, in a low tone, as if talking
+to herself, but evidently addressing the purport of her words to me.
+
+She seemed afraid of being observed by some lurking foe. "Trust the
+Oak," said she; "trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great Beech. Take
+care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be
+changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the Ash is an ogre,--you
+will know him by his thick fingers; and the Alder will smother you with
+her web of hair, if you let her near you at night." All this was uttered
+without pause or alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly and left
+me, walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not conjecture
+what she meant, but satisfied myself with thinking that it would be time
+enough to find out her meaning when there was need to make use of her
+warning, and that the occasion would reveal the admonition. I concluded
+from the flowers that she carried, that the forest could not be
+everywhere so dense as it appeared from where I was now walking; and I
+was right in this conclusion. For soon I came to a more open part, and
+by-and-by crossed a wide grassy glade, on which were several circles of
+brighter green. But even here I was struck with the utter stillness. No
+bird sang. No insect hummed. Not a living creature crossed my way. Yet
+somehow the whole environment seemed only asleep, and to wear even in
+sleep an air of expectation. The trees seemed all to have an expression
+of conscious mystery, as if they said to themselves, "we could, an' if
+we would." They had all a meaning look about them. Then I remembered
+that night is the fairies' day, and the moon their sun; and I
+thought--Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the night comes, it will
+be different. At the same time I, being a man and a child of the day,
+felt some anxiety as to how I should fare among the elves and other
+children of the night who wake when mortals dream, and find their common
+life in those wondrous hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless
+death-like forms of men and women and children, lying strewn and parted
+beneath the weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat
+them down, and hold them drowned and senseless, until the ebbtide comes,
+and the waves sink away, back into the ocean of the dark. But I took
+courage and went on. Soon, however, I became again anxious, though from
+another cause. I had eaten nothing that day, and for an hour past had
+been feeling the want of food. So I grew afraid lest I should find
+nothing to meet my human necessities in this strange place; but once
+more I comforted myself with hope and went on.
+
+Before noon, I fancied I saw a thin blue smoke rising amongst the stems
+of larger trees in front of me; and soon I came to an open spot of
+ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the stems of four
+great trees formed its corners, while their branches met and intertwined
+over its roof, heaping a great cloud of leaves over it, up towards the
+heavens. I wondered at finding a human dwelling in this neighbourhood;
+and yet it did not look altogether human, though sufficiently so to
+encourage me to expect to find some sort of food. Seeing no door, I went
+round to the other side, and there I found one, wide open. A woman sat
+beside it, preparing some vegetables for dinner. This was homely and
+comforting. As I came near, she looked up, and seeing me, showed no
+surprise, but bent her head again over her work, and said in a low tone:
+
+"Did you see my daughter?"
+
+"I believe I did," said I. "Can you give me something to eat, for I am
+very hungry?" "With pleasure," she replied, in the same tone; "but do
+not say anything more, till you come into the house, for the Ash is
+watching us."
+
+Having said this, she rose and led the way into the cottage; which, I
+now saw, was built of the stems of small trees set closely together, and
+was furnished with rough chairs and tables, from which even the bark had
+not been removed. As soon as she had shut the door and set a chair--
+
+"You have fairy blood in you," said she, looking hard at me.
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so; and I
+am trying to find out some trace of it in your countenance. I think I
+see it."
+
+"What do you see?"
+
+"Oh, never mind: I may be mistaken in that."
+
+"But how then do you come to live here?"
+
+"Because I too have fairy blood in me."
+
+Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could perceive,
+notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and especially the
+heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual--I could hardly call it
+grace, and yet it was an expression that strangely contrasted with
+the form of her features. I noticed too that her hands were delicately
+formed, though brown with work and exposure.
+
+"I should be ill," she continued, "if I did not live on the borders of
+the fairies' country, and now and then eat of their food. And I see by
+your eyes that you are not quite free of the same need; though, from
+your education and the activity of your mind, you have felt it less than
+I. You may be further removed too from the fairy race."
+
+I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers.
+
+Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly
+apology for the homeliness of the fare, with which, however, I was in no
+humour to quarrel. I now thought it time to try to get some explanation
+of the strange words both of her daughter and herself.
+
+"What did you mean by speaking so about the Ash?"
+
+She rose and looked out of the little window. My eyes followed her; but
+as the window was too small to allow anything to be seen from where I
+was sitting, I rose and looked over her shoulder. I had just time to
+see, across the open space, on the edge of the denser forest, a single
+large ash-tree, whose foliage showed bluish, amidst the truer green of
+the other trees around it; when she pushed me back with an expression
+of impatience and terror, and then almost shut out the light from the
+window by setting up a large old book in it.
+
+"In general," said she, recovering her composure, "there is no danger in
+the daytime, for then he is sound asleep; but there is something unusual
+going on in the woods; there must be some solemnity among the fairies
+to-night, for all the trees are restless, and although they cannot come
+awake, they see and hear in their sleep."
+
+"But what danger is to be dreaded from him?"
+
+Instead of answering the question, she went again to the window and
+looked out, saying she feared the fairies would be interrupted by foul
+weather, for a storm was brewing in the west.
+
+"And the sooner it grows dark, the sooner the Ash will be awake," added
+she.
+
+I asked her how she knew that there was any unusual excitement in the
+woods. She replied--
+
+"Besides the look of the trees, the dog there is unhappy; and the eyes
+and ears of the white rabbit are redder than usual, and he frisks about
+as if he expected some fun. If the cat were at home, she would have
+her back up; for the young fairies pull the sparks out of her tail with
+bramble thorns, and she knows when they are coming. So do I, in another
+way."
+
+ At this instant, a grey cat rushed in like a demon, and
+disappeared in a hole in the wall.
+
+"There, I told you!" said the woman.
+
+ "But what of the ash-tree?" said I, returning once more to the
+subject. Here, however, the young woman, whom I had met in the morning,
+entered. A smile passed between the mother and daughter; and then the
+latter began to help her mother in little household duties.
+
+"I should like to stay here till the evening," I said; "and then go on
+my journey, if you will allow me."
+
+"You are welcome to do as you please; only it might be better to stay
+all night, than risk the dangers of the wood then. Where are you going?"
+
+"Nay, that I do not know," I replied, "but I wish to see all that is to
+be seen, and therefore I should like to start just at sundown." "You are
+a bold youth, if you have any idea of what you are daring; but a rash
+one, if you know nothing about it; and, excuse me, you do not seem very
+well informed about the country and its manners. However, no one comes
+here but for some reason, either known to himself or to those who have
+charge of him; so you shall do just as you wish."
+
+Accordingly I sat down, and feeling rather tired, and disinclined for
+further talk, I asked leave to look at the old book which still screened
+the window. The woman brought it to me directly, but not before taking
+another look towards the forest, and then drawing a white blind over
+the window. I sat down opposite to it by the table, on which I laid the
+great old volume, and read. It contained many wondrous tales of Fairy
+Land, and olden times, and the Knights of King Arthur's table. I read
+on and on, till the shades of the afternoon began to deepen; for in
+the midst of the forest it gloomed earlier than in the open country. At
+length I came to this passage--
+
+"Here it chanced, that upon their quest, Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale
+rencountered in the depths of a great forest. Now, Sir Galahad was dight
+all in harness of silver, clear and shining; the which is a delight
+to look upon, but full hasty to tarnish, and withouten the labour of a
+ready squire, uneath to be kept fair and clean. And yet withouten squire
+or page, Sir Galahad's armour shone like the moon. And he rode a great
+white mare, whose bases and other housings were black, but all besprent
+with fair lilys of silver sheen. Whereas Sir Percivale bestrode a red
+horse, with a tawny mane and tail; whose trappings were all to-smirched
+with mud and mire; and his armour was wondrous rosty to behold, ne could
+he by any art furbish it again; so that as the sun in his going down
+shone twixt the bare trunks of the trees, full upon the knights twain,
+the one did seem all shining with light, and the other all to glow with
+ruddy fire. Now it came about in this wise. For Sir Percivale, after his
+escape from the demon lady, whenas the cross on the handle of his sword
+smote him to the heart, and he rove himself through the thigh, and
+escaped away, he came to a great wood; and, in nowise cured of his
+fault, yet bemoaning the same, the damosel of the alder tree encountered
+him, right fair to see; and with her fair words and false countenance
+she comforted him and beguiled him, until he followed her where she led
+him to a---"
+
+Here a low hurried cry from my hostess caused me to look up from the
+book, and I read no more.
+
+"Look there!" she said; "look at his fingers!"
+
+Just as I had been reading in the book, the setting sun was shining
+through a cleft in the clouds piled up in the west; and a shadow as of a
+large distorted hand, with thick knobs and humps on the fingers, so that
+it was much wider across the fingers than across the undivided part
+of the hand, passed slowly over the little blind, and then as slowly
+returned in the opposite direction.
+
+"He is almost awake, mother; and greedier than usual to-night."
+
+"Hush, child; you need not make him more angry with us than he is; for
+you do not know how soon something may happen to oblige us to be in the
+forest after nightfall."
+
+"But you are in the forest," said I; "how is it that you are safe here?"
+
+"He dares not come nearer than he is now," she replied; "for any of
+those four oaks, at the corners of our cottage, would tear him to
+pieces; they are our friends. But he stands there and makes awful faces
+at us sometimes, and stretches out his long arms and fingers, and tries
+to kill us with fright; for, indeed, that is his favourite way of doing.
+Pray, keep out of his way to-night."
+
+"Shall I be able to see these things?" said I.
+
+"That I cannot tell yet, not knowing how much of the fairy nature there
+is in you. But we shall soon see whether you can discern the fairies in
+my little garden, and that will be some guide to us."
+
+"Are the trees fairies too, as well as the flowers?" I asked.
+
+"They are of the same race," she replied; "though those you call fairies
+in your country are chiefly the young children of the flower fairies.
+They are very fond of having fun with the thick people, as they call
+you; for, like most children, they like fun better than anything else."
+
+"Why do you have flowers so near you then? Do they not annoy you?"
+
+"Oh, no, they are very amusing, with their mimicries of grown people,
+and mock solemnities. Sometimes they will act a whole play through
+before my eyes, with perfect composure and assurance, for they are not
+afraid of me. Only, as soon as they have done, they burst into peals
+of tiny laughter, as if it was such a joke to have been serious over
+anything. These I speak of, however, are the fairies of the garden.
+They are more staid and educated than those of the fields and woods.
+Of course they have near relations amongst the wild flowers, but they
+patronise them, and treat them as country cousins, who know nothing
+of life, and very little of manners. Now and then, however, they are
+compelled to envy the grace and simplicity of the natural flowers."
+
+"Do they live IN the flowers?" I said.
+
+"I cannot tell," she replied. "There is something in it I do not
+understand. Sometimes they disappear altogether, even from me, though
+I know they are near. They seem to die always with the flowers they
+resemble, and by whose names they are called; but whether they return to
+life with the fresh flowers, or, whether it be new flowers, new fairies,
+I cannot tell. They have as many sorts of dispositions as men and women,
+while their moods are yet more variable; twenty different expressions
+will cross their little faces in half a minute. I often amuse myself
+with watching them, but I have never been able to make personal
+acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she looks up in
+my face, as if I were not worth heeding, gives a little laugh, and runs
+away." Here the woman started, as if suddenly recollecting herself, and
+said in a low voice to her daughter, "Make haste--go and watch him, and
+see in what direction he goes."
+
+I may as well mention here, that the conclusion I arrived at from the
+observations I was afterwards able to make, was, that the flowers die
+because the fairies go away; not that the fairies disappear because
+the flowers die. The flowers seem a sort of houses for them, or outer
+bodies, which they can put on or off when they please. Just as you could
+form some idea of the nature of a man from the kind of house he built,
+if he followed his own taste, so you could, without seeing the fairies,
+tell what any one of them is like, by looking at the flower till you
+feel that you understand it. For just what the flower says to you, would
+the face and form of the fairy say; only so much more plainly as a face
+and human figure can express more than a flower. For the house or the
+clothes, though like the inhabitant or the wearer, cannot be wrought
+into an equal power of utterance. Yet you would see a strange
+resemblance, almost oneness, between the flower and the fairy, which you
+could not describe, but which described itself to you. Whether all the
+flowers have fairies, I cannot determine, any more than I can be sure
+whether all men and women have souls.
+
+The woman and I continued the conversation for a few minutes longer. I
+was much interested by the information she gave me, and astonished
+at the language in which she was able to convey it. It seemed that
+intercourse with the fairies was no bad education in itself. But now the
+daughter returned with the news, that the Ash had just gone away in a
+south-westerly direction; and, as my course seemed to lie eastward, she
+hoped I should be in no danger of meeting him if I departed at once.
+I looked out of the little window, and there stood the ash-tree, to my
+eyes the same as before; but I believed that they knew better than I
+did, and prepared to go. I pulled out my purse, but to my dismay there
+was nothing in it. The woman with a smile begged me not to trouble
+myself, for money was not of the slightest use there; and as I might
+meet with people in my journeys whom I could not recognise to be
+fairies, it was well I had no money to offer, for nothing offended them
+so much.
+
+"They would think," she added, "that you were making game of them; and
+that is their peculiar privilege with regard to us." So we went together
+into the little garden which sloped down towards a lower part of the
+wood.
+
+Here, to my great pleasure, all was life and bustle. There was still
+light enough from the day to see a little; and the pale half-moon,
+halfway to the zenith, was reviving every moment. The whole garden
+was like a carnival, with tiny, gaily decorated forms, in groups,
+assemblies, processions, pairs or trios, moving stately on, running
+about wildly, or sauntering hither or thither. From the cups or bells of
+tall flowers, as from balconies, some looked down on the masses below,
+now bursting with laughter, now grave as owls; but even in their deepest
+solemnity, seeming only to be waiting for the arrival of the next laugh.
+Some were launched on a little marshy stream at the bottom, in boats
+chosen from the heaps of last year's leaves that lay about, curled and
+withered. These soon sank with them; whereupon they swam ashore and got
+others. Those who took fresh rose-leaves for their boats floated the
+longest; but for these they had to fight; for the fairy of the rose-tree
+complained bitterly that they were stealing her clothes, and defended
+her property bravely.
+
+"You can't wear half you've got," said some.
+
+"Never you mind; I don't choose you to have them: they are my property."
+
+"All for the good of the community!" said one, and ran off with a great
+hollow leaf. But the rose-fairy sprang after him (what a beauty she was!
+only too like a drawing-room young lady), knocked him heels-over-head as
+he ran, and recovered her great red leaf. But in the meantime twenty had
+hurried off in different directions with others just as good; and the
+little creature sat down and cried, and then, in a pet, sent a perfect
+pink snowstorm of petals from her tree, leaping from branch to branch,
+and stamping and shaking and pulling. At last, after another good cry,
+she chose the biggest she could find, and ran away laughing, to launch
+her boat amongst the rest.
+
+But my attention was first and chiefly attracted by a group of fairies
+near the cottage, who were talking together around what seemed a
+last dying primrose. They talked singing, and their talk made a song,
+something like this:
+
+
+
+    "Sister Snowdrop died
+        Before we were born."
+    "She came like a bride
+        In a snowy morn."
+    "What's a bride?"
+        "What is snow?
+    "Never tried."
+        "Do not know."
+    "Who told you about her?"
+        "Little Primrose there
+    Cannot do without her."
+        "Oh, so sweetly fair!"
+    "Never fear,
+        She will come,
+    Primrose dear."
+        "Is she dumb?"
+
+    "She'll come by-and-by."
+        "You will never see her."
+    "She went home to dies,
+        "Till the new year."
+    "Snowdrop!"  "'Tis no good
+        To invite her."
+    "Primrose is very rude,
+        "I will bite her."
+
+    "Oh, you naughty Pocket!
+        "Look, she drops her head."
+    "She deserved it, Rocket,
+        "And she was nearly dead."
+    "To your hammock--off with you!"
+        "And swing alone."
+    "No one will laugh with you."
+        "No, not one."
+
+    "Now let us moan."
+        "And cover her o'er."
+    "Primrose is gone."
+        "All but the flower."
+    "Here is a leaf."
+        "Lay her upon it."
+    "Follow in grief."
+        "Pocket has done it."
+
+    "Deeper, poor creature!
+        Winter may come."
+    "He cannot reach her--
+        That is a hum."
+    "She is buried, the beauty!"
+        "Now she is done."
+    "That was the duty."
+        "Now for the fun."
+
+
+And with a wild laugh they sprang away, most of them towards the
+cottage. During the latter part of the song-talk, they had formed
+themselves into a funeral procession, two of them bearing poor Primrose,
+whose death Pocket had hastened by biting her stalk, upon one of her
+own great leaves. They bore her solemnly along some distance, and
+then buried her under a tree. Although I say HER I saw nothing but
+the withered primrose-flower on its long stalk. Pocket, who had been
+expelled from the company by common consent, went sulkily away towards
+her hammock, for she was the fairy of the calceolaria, and looked rather
+wicked. When she reached its stem, she stopped and looked round. I could
+not help speaking to her, for I stood near her. I said, "Pocket, how
+could you be so naughty?"
+
+"I am never naughty," she said, half-crossly, half-defiantly; "only if
+you come near my hammock, I will bite you, and then you will go away."
+
+"Why did you bite poor Primrose?"
+
+"Because she said we should never see Snowdrop; as if we were not good
+enough to look at her, and she was, the proud thing!--served her right!"
+
+"Oh, Pocket, Pocket," said I; but by this time the party which had
+gone towards the house, rushed out again, shouting and screaming with
+laughter. Half of them were on the cat's back, and half held on by her
+fur and tail, or ran beside her; till, more coming to their help, the
+furious cat was held fast; and they proceeded to pick the sparks out
+of her with thorns and pins, which they handled like harpoons. Indeed,
+there were more instruments at work about her than there could have
+been sparks in her. One little fellow who held on hard by the tip of
+the tail, with his feet planted on the ground at an angle of forty-five
+degrees, helping to keep her fast, administered a continuous flow of
+admonitions to Pussy.
+
+"Now, Pussy, be patient. You know quite well it is all for your good.
+You cannot be comfortable with all those sparks in you; and, indeed, I
+am charitably disposed to believe" (here he became very pompous) "that
+they are the cause of all your bad temper; so we must have them all out,
+every one; else we shall be reduced to the painful necessity of cutting
+your claws, and pulling out your eye-teeth. Quiet! Pussy, quiet!"
+
+But with a perfect hurricane of feline curses, the poor animal broke
+loose, and dashed across the garden and through the hedge, faster than
+even the fairies could follow. "Never mind, never mind, we shall find
+her again; and by that time she will have laid in a fresh stock of
+sparks. Hooray!" And off they set, after some new mischief.
+
+But I will not linger to enlarge on the amusing display of these
+frolicsome creatures. Their manners and habits are now so well known to
+the world, having been so often described by eyewitnesses, that it would
+be only indulging self-conceit, to add my account in full to the rest.
+I cannot help wishing, however, that my readers could see them for
+themselves. Especially do I desire that they should see the fairy of the
+daisy; a little, chubby, round-eyed child, with such innocent trust in
+his look! Even the most mischievous of the fairies would not tease him,
+although he did not belong to their set at all, but was quite a little
+country bumpkin. He wandered about alone, and looked at everything, with
+his hands in his little pockets, and a white night-cap on, the darling!
+He was not so beautiful as many other wild flowers I saw afterwards, but
+so dear and loving in his looks and little confident ways.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+        "When bale is att hyest, boote is nyest."
+                                Ballad of Sir Aldingar.
+
+By this time, my hostess was quite anxious that I should be gone. So,
+with warm thanks for their hospitality, I took my leave, and went my way
+through the little garden towards the forest. Some of the garden flowers
+had wandered into the wood, and were growing here and there along
+the path, but the trees soon became too thick and shadowy for them. I
+particularly noticed some tall lilies, which grew on both sides of
+the way, with large dazzlingly white flowers, set off by the universal
+green. It was now dark enough for me to see that every flower was
+shining with a light of its own. Indeed it was by this light that I
+saw them, an internal, peculiar light, proceeding from each, and not
+reflected from a common source of light as in the daytime. This light
+sufficed only for the plant itself, and was not strong enough to cast
+any but the faintest shadows around it, or to illuminate any of the
+neighbouring objects with other than the faintest tinge of its own
+individual hue. From the lilies above mentioned, from the campanulas,
+from the foxgloves, and every bell-shaped flower, curious little figures
+shot up their heads, peeped at me, and drew back. They seemed to inhabit
+them, as snails their shells but I was sure some of them were intruders,
+and belonged to the gnomes or goblin-fairies, who inhabit the ground
+and earthy creeping plants. From the cups of Arum lilies, creatures with
+great heads and grotesque faces shot up like Jack-in-the-box, and made
+grimaces at me; or rose slowly and slily over the edge of the cup,
+and spouted water at me, slipping suddenly back, like those little
+soldier-crabs that inhabit the shells of sea-snails. Passing a row of
+tall thistles, I saw them crowded with little faces, which peeped every
+one from behind its flower, and drew back as quickly; and I heard them
+saying to each other, evidently intending me to hear, but the speaker
+always hiding behind his tuft, when I looked in his direction, "Look at
+him! Look at him! He has begun a story without a beginning, and it will
+never have any end. He! he! he! Look at him!"
+
+But as I went further into the wood, these sights and sounds became
+fewer, giving way to others of a different character. A little forest
+of wild hyacinths was alive with exquisite creatures, who stood nearly
+motionless, with drooping necks, holding each by the stem of her flower,
+and swaying gently with it, whenever a low breath of wind swung the
+crowded floral belfry. In like manner, though differing of course
+in form and meaning, stood a group of harebells, like little angels
+waiting, ready, till they were wanted to go on some yet unknown message.
+In darker nooks, by the mossy roots of the trees, or in little tufts
+of grass, each dwelling in a globe of its own green light, weaving a
+network of grass and its shadows, glowed the glowworms.
+
+They were just like the glowworms of our own land, for they are fairies
+everywhere; worms in the day, and glowworms at night, when their own can
+appear, and they can be themselves to others as well as themselves.
+But they had their enemies here. For I saw great strong-armed beetles,
+hurrying about with most unwieldy haste, awkward as elephant-calves,
+looking apparently for glowworms; for the moment a beetle espied one,
+through what to it was a forest of grass, or an underwood of moss, it
+pounced upon it, and bore it away, in spite of its feeble resistance.
+Wondering what their object could be, I watched one of the beetles,
+and then I discovered a thing I could not account for. But it is no use
+trying to account for things in Fairy Land; and one who travels there
+soon learns to forget the very idea of doing so, and takes everything as
+it comes; like a child, who, being in a chronic condition of wonder, is
+surprised at nothing. What I saw was this. Everywhere, here and there
+over the ground, lay little, dark-looking lumps of something more like
+earth than anything else, and about the size of a chestnut. The beetles
+hunted in couples for these; and having found one, one of them stayed
+to watch it, while the other hurried to find a glowworm. By signals, I
+presume, between them, the latter soon found his companion again: they
+then took the glowworm and held its luminous tail to the dark earthly
+pellet; when lo, it shot up into the air like a sky-rocket, seldom,
+however, reaching the height of the highest tree. Just like a rocket
+too, it burst in the air, and fell in a shower of the most gorgeously
+coloured sparks of every variety of hue; golden and red, and purple and
+green, and blue and rosy fires crossed and inter-crossed each other,
+beneath the shadowy heads, and between the columnar stems of the forest
+trees. They never used the same glowworm twice, I observed; but let him
+go, apparently uninjured by the use they had made of him.
+
+In other parts, the whole of the immediately surrounding foliage was
+illuminated by the interwoven dances in the air of splendidly coloured
+fire-flies, which sped hither and thither, turned, twisted, crossed, and
+recrossed, entwining every complexity of intervolved motion. Here and
+there, whole mighty trees glowed with an emitted phosphorescent light.
+You could trace the very course of the great roots in the earth by the
+faint light that came through; and every twig, and every vein on every
+leaf was a streak of pale fire.
+
+All this time, as I went through the wood, I was haunted with the
+feeling that other shapes, more like my own size and mien, were moving
+about at a little distance on all sides of me. But as yet I could
+discern none of them, although the moon was high enough to send a great
+many of her rays down between the trees, and these rays were unusually
+bright, and sight-giving, notwithstanding she was only a half-moon. I
+constantly imagined, however, that forms were visible in all directions
+except that to which my gaze was turned; and that they only became
+invisible, or resolved themselves into other woodland shapes, the moment
+my looks were directed towards them. However this may have been, except
+for this feeling of presence, the woods seemed utterly bare of anything
+like human companionship, although my glance often fell on some object
+which I fancied to be a human form; for I soon found that I was quite
+deceived; as, the moment I fixed my regard on it, it showed plainly that
+it was a bush, or a tree, or a rock.
+
+Soon a vague sense of discomfort possessed me. With variations of
+relief, this gradually increased; as if some evil thing were wandering
+about in my neighbourhood, sometimes nearer and sometimes further off,
+but still approaching. The feeling continued and deepened, until all my
+pleasure in the shows of various kinds that everywhere betokened the
+presence of the merry fairies vanished by degrees, and left me full
+of anxiety and fear, which I was unable to associate with any definite
+object whatever. At length the thought crossed my mind with horror: "Can
+it be possible that the Ash is looking for me? or that, in his nightly
+wanderings, his path is gradually verging towards mine?" I comforted
+myself, however, by remembering that he had started quite in another
+direction; one that would lead him, if he kept it, far apart from me;
+especially as, for the last two or three hours, I had been diligently
+journeying eastward. I kept on my way, therefore, striving by direct
+effort of the will against the encroaching fear; and to this end
+occupying my mind, as much as I could, with other thoughts. I was so far
+successful that, although I was conscious, if I yielded for a moment, I
+should be almost overwhelmed with horror, I was yet able to walk right
+on for an hour or more. What I feared I could not tell. Indeed, I was
+left in a state of the vaguest uncertainty as regarded the nature of my
+enemy, and knew not the mode or object of his attacks; for, somehow or
+other, none of my questions had succeeded in drawing a definite answer
+from the dame in the cottage. How then to defend myself I knew not; nor
+even by what sign I might with certainty recognise the presence of my
+foe; for as yet this vague though powerful fear was all the indication
+of danger I had. To add to my distress, the clouds in the west had risen
+nearly to the top of the skies, and they and the moon were travelling
+slowly towards each other. Indeed, some of their advanced guard had
+already met her, and she had begun to wade through a filmy vapour that
+gradually deepened.
+
+At length she was for a moment almost entirely obscured. When she shone
+out again, with a brilliancy increased by the contrast, I saw plainly
+on the path before me--from around which at this spot the trees receded,
+leaving a small space of green sward--the shadow of a large hand, with
+knotty joints and protuberances here and there. Especially I remarked,
+even in the midst of my fear, the bulbous points of the fingers. I
+looked hurriedly all around, but could see nothing from which such
+a shadow should fall. Now, however, that I had a direction, however
+undetermined, in which to project my apprehension, the very sense of
+danger and need of action overcame that stifling which is the worst
+property of fear. I reflected in a moment, that if this were indeed a
+shadow, it was useless to look for the object that cast it in any other
+direction than between the shadow and the moon. I looked, and peered,
+and intensified my vision, all to no purpose. I could see nothing of
+that kind, not even an ash-tree in the neighbourhood. Still the shadow
+remained; not steady, but moving to and fro, and once I saw the fingers
+close, and grind themselves close, like the claws of a wild animal, as
+if in uncontrollable longing for some anticipated prey. There seemed
+but one mode left of discovering the substance of this shadow. I went
+forward boldly, though with an inward shudder which I would not heed, to
+the spot where the shadow lay, threw myself on the ground, laid my head
+within the form of the hand, and turned my eyes towards the moon Good
+heavens! what did I see? I wonder that ever I arose, and that the very
+shadow of the hand did not hold me where I lay until fear had frozen my
+brain. I saw the strangest figure; vague, shadowy, almost transparent,
+in the central parts, and gradually deepening in substance towards the
+outside, until it ended in extremities capable of casting such a shadow
+as fell from the hand, through the awful fingers of which I now saw the
+moon. The hand was uplifted in the attitude of a paw about to strike
+its prey. But the face, which throbbed with fluctuating and pulsatory
+visibility--not from changes in the light it reflected, but from changes
+in its own conditions of reflecting power, the alterations being from
+within, not from without--it was horrible. I do not know how to describe
+it. It caused a new sensation. Just as one cannot translate a horrible
+odour, or a ghastly pain, or a fearful sound, into words, so I cannot
+describe this new form of awful hideousness. I can only try to describe
+something that is not it, but seems somewhat parallel to it; or at least
+is suggested by it. It reminded me of what I had heard of vampires; for
+the face resembled that of a corpse more than anything else I can
+think of; especially when I can conceive such a face in motion, but
+not suggesting any life as the source of the motion. The features were
+rather handsome than otherwise, except the mouth, which had scarcely a
+curve in it. The lips were of equal thickness; but the thickness was
+not at all remarkable, even although they looked slightly swollen. They
+seemed fixedly open, but were not wide apart. Of course I did not REMARK
+these lineaments at the time: I was too horrified for that. I noted them
+afterwards, when the form returned on my inward sight with a vividness
+too intense to admit of my doubting the accuracy of the reflex. But the
+most awful of the features were the eyes. These were alive, yet not with
+life.
+
+They seemed lighted up with an infinite greed. A gnawing voracity, which
+devoured the devourer, seemed to be the indwelling and propelling power
+of the whole ghostly apparition. I lay for a few moments simply imbruted
+with terror; when another cloud, obscuring the moon, delivered me from
+the immediately paralysing effects of the presence to the vision of the
+object of horror, while it added the force of imagination to the power
+of fear within me; inasmuch as, knowing far worse cause for apprehension
+than before, I remained equally ignorant from what I had to defend
+myself, or how to take any precautions: he might be upon me in the
+darkness any moment. I sprang to my feet, and sped I knew not whither,
+only away from the spectre. I thought no longer of the path, and often
+narrowly escaped dashing myself against a tree, in my headlong flight of
+fear.
+
+Great drops of rain began to patter on the leaves. Thunder began to
+mutter, then growl in the distance. I ran on. The rain fell heavier. At
+length the thick leaves could hold it up no longer; and, like a second
+firmament, they poured their torrents on the earth. I was soon drenched,
+but that was nothing. I came to a small swollen stream that rushed
+through the woods. I had a vague hope that if I crossed this stream, I
+should be in safety from my pursuer; but I soon found that my hope was
+as false as it was vague. I dashed across the stream, ascended a rising
+ground, and reached a more open space, where stood only great trees.
+Through them I directed my way, holding eastward as nearly as I could
+guess, but not at all certain that I was not moving in an opposite
+direction. My mind was just reviving a little from its extreme terror,
+when, suddenly, a flash of lightning, or rather a cataract of successive
+flashes, behind me, seemed to throw on the ground in front of me, but
+far more faintly than before, from the extent of the source of the
+light, the shadow of the same horrible hand. I sprang forward, stung
+to yet wilder speed; but had not run many steps before my foot slipped,
+and, vainly attempting to recover myself, I fell at the foot of one
+of the large trees. Half-stunned, I yet raised myself, and almost
+involuntarily looked back. All I saw was the hand within three feet
+of my face. But, at the same moment, I felt two large soft arms thrown
+round me from behind; and a voice like a woman's said: "Do not fear the
+goblin; he dares not hurt you now." With that, the hand was suddenly
+withdrawn as from a fire, and disappeared in the darkness and the rain.
+Overcome with the mingling of terror and joy, I lay for some time almost
+insensible. The first thing I remember is the sound of a voice above me,
+full and low, and strangely reminding me of the sound of a gentle wind
+amidst the leaves of a great tree. It murmured over and over again:
+"I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a
+beech-tree." I found I was seated on the ground, leaning against a human
+form, and supported still by the arms around me, which I knew to be
+those of a woman who must be rather above the human size, and largely
+proportioned. I turned my head, but without moving otherwise, for I
+feared lest the arms should untwine themselves; and clear, somewhat
+mournful eyes met mine. At least that is how they impressed me; but I
+could see very little of colour or outline as we sat in the dark and
+rainy shadow of the tree. The face seemed very lovely, and solemn from
+its stillness; with the aspect of one who is quite content, but waiting
+for something. I saw my conjecture from her arms was correct: she was
+above the human scale throughout, but not greatly.
+
+"Why do you call yourself a beech-tree?" I said.
+
+"Because I am one," she replied, in the same low, musical, murmuring
+voice.
+
+"You are a woman," I returned.
+
+"Do you think so? Am I very like a woman then?"
+
+"You are a very beautiful woman. Is it possible you should not know it?"
+
+"I am very glad you think so. I fancy I feel like a woman sometimes. I
+do so to-night--and always when the rain drips from my hair. For there
+is an old prophecy in our woods that one day we shall all be men and
+women like you. Do you know anything about it in your region? Shall I
+be very happy when I am a woman? I fear not, for it is always in nights
+like these that I feel like one. But I long to be a woman for all that."
+
+I had let her talk on, for her voice was like a solution of all musical
+sounds. I now told her that I could hardly say whether women were happy
+or not. I knew one who had not been happy; and for my part, I had often
+longed for Fairy Land, as she now longed for the world of men. But then
+neither of us had lived long, and perhaps people grew happier as they
+grew older. Only I doubted it.
+
+I could not help sighing. She felt the sigh, for her arms were still
+round me. She asked me how old I was.
+
+"Twenty-one," said I.
+
+"Why, you baby!" said she, and kissed me with the sweetest kiss of winds
+and odours. There was a cool faithfulness in the kiss that revived my
+heart wonderfully. I felt that I feared the dreadful Ash no more.
+
+"What did the horrible Ash want with me?" I said.
+
+"I am not quite sure, but I think he wants to bury you at the foot of
+his tree. But he shall not touch you, my child."
+
+"Are all the ash-trees as dreadful as he?"
+
+"Oh, no. They are all disagreeable selfish creatures--(what horrid men
+they will make, if it be true!)--but this one has a hole in his heart
+that nobody knows of but one or two; and he is always trying to fill it
+up, but he cannot. That must be what he wanted you for. I wonder if he
+will ever be a man. If he is, I hope they will kill him."
+
+"How kind of you to save me from him!"
+
+"I will take care that he shall not come near you again. But there are
+some in the wood more like me, from whom, alas! I cannot protect you.
+Only if you see any of them very beautiful, try to walk round them."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"I cannot tell you more. But now I must tie some of my hair about you,
+and then the Ash will not touch you. Here, cut some off. You men have
+strange cutting things about you."
+
+She shook her long hair loose over me, never moving her arms.
+
+"I cannot cut your beautiful hair. It would be a shame."
+
+"Not cut my hair! It will have grown long enough before any is wanted
+again in this wild forest. Perhaps it may never be of any use again--not
+till I am a woman." And she sighed.
+
+As gently as I could, I cut with a knife a long tress of flowing, dark
+hair, she hanging her beautiful head over me. When I had finished, she
+shuddered and breathed deep, as one does when an acute pain, steadfastly
+endured without sign of suffering, is at length relaxed. She then took
+the hair and tied it round me, singing a strange, sweet song, which I
+could not understand, but which left in me a feeling like this--
+
+            "I saw thee ne'er before;
+             I see thee never more;
+             But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,
+             Have made thee mine, till all my years are done."
+
+I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me again,
+and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light wind that had
+arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a trance of still delight.
+It told me the secret of the woods, and the flowers, and the birds. At
+one time I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring
+forests, over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry
+things--I had almost said creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers
+at every turn. At another, I lay half dreaming in the hot summer noon,
+with a book of old tales beside me, beneath a great beech; or, in
+autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered me,
+and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of decay; or, in
+a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I went home to a warm
+fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs to the cold, snowy moon,
+with her opal zone around her. At last I had fallen asleep; for I
+know nothing more that passed till I found myself lying under a superb
+beech-tree, in the clear light of the morning, just before sunrise.
+Around me was a girdle of fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought nothing
+with me out of Fairy Land, but memories--memories. The great boughs of
+the beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth stem, with
+its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like undeveloped limbs.
+The leaves and branches above kept on the song which had sung me asleep;
+only now, to my mind, it sounded like a farewell and a speedwell. I sat
+a long time, unwilling to go; but my unfinished story urged me on. I
+must act and wander. With the sun well risen, I rose, and put my arms as
+far as they would reach around the beech-tree, and kissed it, and said
+good-bye. A trembling went through the leaves; a few of the last drops
+of the night's rain fell from off them at my feet; and as I walked
+slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the words: "I may
+love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+        "And she was smooth and full, as if one gush
+         Of life had washed her, or as if a sleep
+         Lay on her eyelid, easier to sweep
+         Than bee from daisy."
+                                BEDDOIS' Pygmalion.
+
+        "Sche was as whyt as lylye yn May,
+         Or snow that sneweth yn wynterys day."
+                             Romance of Sir Launfal.
+
+
+I walked on, in the fresh morning air, as if new-born. The only thing
+that damped my pleasure was a cloud of something between sorrow and
+delight that crossed my mind with the frequently returning thought of my
+last night's hostess. "But then," thought I, "if she is sorry, I could
+not help it; and she has all the pleasures she ever had. Such a day as
+this is surely a joy to her, as much at least as to me. And her life
+will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what
+came, but could not stay. And if ever she is a woman, who knows but
+we may meet somewhere? there is plenty of room for meeting in the
+universe." Comforting myself thus, yet with a vague compunction, as if
+I ought not to have left her, I went on. There was little to distinguish
+the woods to-day from those of my own land; except that all the wild
+things, rabbits, birds, squirrels, mice, and the numberless other
+inhabitants, were very tame; that is, they did not run away from me, but
+gazed at me as I passed, frequently coming nearer, as if to examine
+me more closely. Whether this came from utter ignorance, or from
+familiarity with the human appearance of beings who never hurt them, I
+could not tell. As I stood once, looking up to the splendid flower of
+a parasite, which hung from the branch of a tree over my head, a large
+white rabbit cantered slowly up, put one of its little feet on one of
+mine, and looked up at me with its red eyes, just as I had been
+looking up at the flower above me. I stooped and stroked it; but when
+I attempted to lift it, it banged the ground with its hind feet and
+scampered off at a great rate, turning, however, to look at me several
+times before I lost sight of it. Now and then, too, a dim human figure
+would appear and disappear, at some distance, amongst the trees, moving
+like a sleep-walker. But no one ever came near me.
+
+This day I found plenty of food in the forest--strange nuts and fruits
+I had never seen before. I hesitated to eat them; but argued that, if
+I could live on the air of Fairy Land, I could live on its food also. I
+found my reasoning correct, and the result was better than I had hoped;
+for it not only satisfied my hunger, but operated in such a way upon my
+senses that I was brought into far more complete relationship with the
+things around me. The human forms appeared much more dense and defined;
+more tangibly visible, if I may say so. I seemed to know better which
+direction to choose when any doubt arose. I began to feel in some degree
+what the birds meant in their songs, though I could not express it in
+words, any more than you can some landscapes. At times, to my surprise,
+I found myself listening attentively, and as if it were no unusual
+thing with me, to a conversation between two squirrels or monkeys.
+The subjects were not very interesting, except as associated with the
+individual life and necessities of the little creatures: where the best
+nuts were to be found in the neighbourhood, and who could crack them
+best, or who had most laid up for the winter, and such like; only they
+never said where the store was. There was no great difference in kind
+between their talk and our ordinary human conversation. Some of the
+creatures I never heard speak at all, and believe they never do so,
+except under the impulse of some great excitement. The mice talked; but
+the hedgehogs seemed very phlegmatic; and though I met a couple of moles
+above ground several times, they never said a word to each other in my
+hearing. There were no wild beasts in the forest; at least, I did not
+see one larger than a wild cat. There were plenty of snakes, however,
+and I do not think they were all harmless; but none ever bit me.
+
+Soon after mid-day I arrived at a bare rocky hill, of no great size, but
+very steep; and having no trees--scarcely even a bush--upon it, entirely
+exposed to the heat of the sun. Over this my way seemed to lie, and
+I immediately began the ascent. On reaching the top, hot and weary, I
+looked around me, and saw that the forest still stretched as far as the
+sight could reach on every side of me. I observed that the trees, in the
+direction in which I was about to descend, did not come so near the
+foot of the hill as on the other side, and was especially regretting the
+unexpected postponement of shelter, because this side of the hill seemed
+more difficult to descend than the other had been to climb, when my eye
+caught the appearance of a natural path, winding down through broken
+rocks and along the course of a tiny stream, which I hoped would lead
+me more easily to the foot. I tried it, and found the descent not at all
+laborious; nevertheless, when I reached the bottom, I was very tired and
+exhausted with the heat. But just where the path seemed to end, rose
+a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs and creeping plants, some of
+them in full and splendid blossom: these almost concealed an opening in
+the rock, into which the path appeared to lead. I entered, thirsting for
+the shade which it promised. What was my delight to find a rocky
+cell, all the angles rounded away with rich moss, and every ledge and
+projection crowded with lovely ferns, the variety of whose forms, and
+groupings, and shades wrought in me like a poem; for such a harmony
+could not exist, except they all consented to some one end! A little
+well of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow in one corner. I drank,
+and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life must be; then threw myself
+on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along the inner end. Here I lay
+in a delicious reverie for some time; during which all lovely forms, and
+colours, and sounds seemed to use my brain as a common hall, where they
+could come and go, unbidden and unexcused. I had never imagined that
+such capacity for simple happiness lay in me, as was now awakened by
+this assembly of forms and spiritual sensations, which yet were far too
+vague to admit of being translated into any shape common to my own and
+another mind. I had lain for an hour, I should suppose, though it may
+have been far longer, when, the harmonious tumult in my mind having
+somewhat relaxed, I became aware that my eyes were fixed on a strange,
+time-worn bas-relief on the rock opposite to me. This, after some
+pondering, I concluded to represent Pygmalion, as he awaited the
+quickening of his statue. The sculptor sat more rigid than the figure to
+which his eyes were turned. That seemed about to step from its pedestal
+and embrace the man, who waited rather than expected.
+
+"A lovely story," I said to myself. "This cave, now, with the bushes cut
+away from the entrance to let the light in, might be such a place as he
+would choose, withdrawn from the notice of men, to set up his block of
+marble, and mould into a visible body the thought already clothed with
+form in the unseen hall of the sculptor's brain. And, indeed, if I
+mistake not," I said, starting up, as a sudden ray of light arrived
+at that moment through a crevice in the roof, and lighted up a small
+portion of the rock, bare of vegetation, "this very rock is marble,
+white enough and delicate enough for any statue, even if destined to
+become an ideal woman in the arms of the sculptor."
+
+I took my knife and removed the moss from a part of the block on which
+I had been lying; when, to my surprise, I found it more like alabaster
+than ordinary marble, and soft to the edge of the knife. In fact, it
+was alabaster. By an inexplicable, though by no means unusual kind of
+impulse, I went on removing the moss from the surface of the stone;
+and soon saw that it was polished, or at least smooth, throughout. I
+continued my labour; and after clearing a space of about a couple of
+square feet, I observed what caused me to prosecute the work with more
+interest and care than before. For the ray of sunlight had now reached
+the spot I had cleared, and under its lustre the alabaster revealed
+its usual slight transparency when polished, except where my knife had
+scratched the surface; and I observed that the transparency seemed to
+have a definite limit, and to end upon an opaque body like the more
+solid, white marble. I was careful to scratch no more. And first, a
+vague anticipation gave way to a startling sense of possibility; then,
+as I proceeded, one revelation after another produced the entrancing
+conviction, that under the crust of alabaster lay a dimly visible form
+in marble, but whether of man or woman I could not yet tell. I worked on
+as rapidly as the necessary care would permit; and when I had uncovered
+the whole mass, and rising from my knees, had retreated a little way,
+so that the effect of the whole might fall on me, I saw before me
+with sufficient plainness--though at the same time with considerable
+indistinctness, arising from the limited amount of light the place
+admitted, as well as from the nature of the object itself--a block of
+pure alabaster enclosing the form, apparently in marble, of a reposing
+woman. She lay on one side, with her hand under her cheek, and her face
+towards me; but her hair had fallen partly over her face, so that I
+could not see the expression of the whole. What I did see appeared to
+me perfectly lovely; more near the face that had been born with me in
+my soul, than anything I had seen before in nature or art. The actual
+outlines of the rest of the form were so indistinct, that the more than
+semi-opacity of the alabaster seemed insufficient to account for
+the fact; and I conjectured that a light robe added its obscurity.
+Numberless histories passed through my mind of change of substance from
+enchantment and other causes, and of imprisonments such as this before
+me. I thought of the Prince of the Enchanted City, half marble and half
+a man; of Ariel; of Niobe; of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood; of the
+bleeding trees; and many other histories. Even my adventure of the
+preceding evening with the lady of the beech-tree contributed to arouse
+the wild hope, that by some means life might be given to this form also,
+and that, breaking from her alabaster tomb, she might glorify my eyes
+with her presence. "For," I argued, "who can tell but this cave may be
+the home of Marble, and this, essential Marble--that spirit of marble
+which, present throughout, makes it capable of being moulded into any
+form? Then if she should awake! But how to awake her? A kiss awoke
+the Sleeping Beauty! a kiss cannot reach her through the incrusting
+alabaster." I kneeled, however, and kissed the pale coffin; but she
+slept on. I bethought me of Orpheus, and the following stones--that
+trees should follow his music seemed nothing surprising now. Might not a
+song awake this form, that the glory of motion might for a time displace
+the loveliness of rest? Sweet sounds can go where kisses may not enter.
+I sat and thought. Now, although always delighting in music, I had never
+been gifted with the power of song, until I entered the fairy forest. I
+had a voice, and I had a true sense of sound; but when I tried to sing,
+the one would not content the other, and so I remained silent. This
+morning, however, I had found myself, ere I was aware, rejoicing in a
+song; but whether it was before or after I had eaten of the fruits
+of the forest, I could not satisfy myself. I concluded it was after,
+however; and that the increased impulse to sing I now felt, was in part
+owing to having drunk of the little well, which shone like a brilliant
+eye in a corner of the cave. I sat down on the ground by the "antenatal
+tomb," leaned upon it with my face towards the head of the figure
+within, and sang--the words and tones coming together, and inseparably
+connected, as if word and tone formed one thing; or, as if each word
+could be uttered only in that tone, and was incapable of distinction
+from it, except in idea, by an acute analysis. I sang something like
+this: but the words are only a dull representation of a state whose
+very elevation precluded the possibility of remembrance; and in which I
+presume the words really employed were as far above these, as that state
+transcended this wherein I recall it:
+
+            "Marble woman, vainly sleeping
+             In the very death of dreams!
+             Wilt thou--slumber from thee sweeping,
+             All but what with vision teems--
+             Hear my voice come through the golden
+             Mist of memory and hope;
+             And with shadowy smile embolden
+             Me with primal Death to cope?
+
+            "Thee the sculptors all pursuing,
+             Have embodied but their own;
+             Round their visions, form enduring,
+             Marble vestments thou hast thrown;
+             But thyself, in silence winding,
+             Thou hast kept eternally;
+             Thee they found not, many finding--
+             I have found thee: wake for me."
+
+
+As I sang, I looked earnestly at the face so vaguely revealed before me.
+I fancied, yet believed it to be but fancy, that through the dim veil
+of the alabaster, I saw a motion of the head as if caused by a sinking
+sigh. I gazed more earnestly, and concluded that it was but fancy.
+Neverthless I could not help singing again--
+
+            "Rest is now filled full of beauty,
+             And can give thee up, I ween;
+             Come thou forth, for other duty
+             Motion pineth for her queen.
+
+            "Or, if needing years to wake thee
+             From thy slumbrous solitudes,
+             Come, sleep-walking, and betake thee
+             To the friendly, sleeping woods.
+
+             Sweeter dreams are in the forest,
+             Round thee storms would never rave;
+             And when need of rest is sorest,
+             Glide thou then into thy cave.
+
+            "Or, if still thou choosest rather
+             Marble, be its spell on me;
+             Let thy slumber round me gather,
+             Let another dream with thee!"
+
+
+Again I paused, and gazed through the stony shroud, as if, by very force
+of penetrative sight, I would clear every lineament of the lovely face.
+And now I thought the hand that had lain under the cheek, had slipped
+a little downward. But then I could not be sure that I had at first
+observed its position accurately. So I sang again; for the longing had
+grown into a passionate need of seeing her alive--
+
+            "Or art thou Death, O woman? for since I
+                Have set me singing by thy side,
+             Life hath forsook the upper sky,
+                And all the outer world hath died.
+
+            "Yea, I am dead; for thou hast drawn
+                My life all downward unto thee.
+             Dead moon of love! let twilight dawn:
+                Awake! and let the darkness flee.
+
+            "Cold lady of the lovely stone!
+                Awake! or I shall perish here;
+             And thou be never more alone,
+                My form and I for ages near.
+
+            "But words are vain; reject them all--
+                They utter but a feeble part:
+             Hear thou the depths from which they call,
+                The voiceless longing of my heart."
+
+
+There arose a slightly crashing sound. Like a sudden apparition that
+comes and is gone, a white form, veiled in a light robe of whiteness,
+burst upwards from the stone, stood, glided forth, and gleamed away
+towards the woods. For I followed to the mouth of the cave, as soon
+as the amazement and concentration of delight permitted the nerves of
+motion again to act; and saw the white form amidst the trees, as it
+crossed a little glade on the edge of the forest where the sunlight fell
+full, seeming to gather with intenser radiance on the one object that
+floated rather than flitted through its lake of beams. I gazed after her
+in a kind of despair; found, freed, lost! It seemed useless to follow,
+yet follow I must. I marked the direction she took; and without once
+looking round to the forsaken cave, I hastened towards the forest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     "Ah, let a man beware, when his wishes, fulfilled, rain down
+     upon him, and his happiness is unbounded."
+
+     "Thy red lips, like worms,
+         Travel over my cheek."
+                   --MOTHERWELL.
+
+But as I crossed the space between the foot of the hill and the forest,
+a vision of another kind delayed my steps. Through an opening to
+the westward flowed, like a stream, the rays of the setting sun, and
+overflowed with a ruddy splendour the open space where I was. And riding
+as it were down this stream towards me, came a horseman in what appeared
+red armour. From frontlet to tail, the horse likewise shone red in the
+sunset. I felt as if I must have seen the knight before; but as he drew
+near, I could recall no feature of his countenance. Ere he came up
+to me, however, I remembered the legend of Sir Percival in the rusty
+armour, which I had left unfinished in the old book in the cottage: it
+was of Sir Percival that he reminded me. And no wonder; for when he came
+close up to me, I saw that, from crest to heel, the whole surface of his
+armour was covered with a light rust. The golden spurs shone, but the
+iron greaves glowed in the sunlight. The MORNING STAR, which hung from
+his wrist, glittered and glowed with its silver and bronze. His whole
+appearance was terrible; but his face did not answer to this appearance.
+It was sad, even to gloominess; and something of shame seemed to cover
+it. Yet it was noble and high, though thus beclouded; and the form
+looked lofty, although the head drooped, and the whole frame was bowed
+as with an inward grief. The horse seemed to share in his master's
+dejection, and walked spiritless and slow. I noticed, too, that the
+white plume on his helmet was discoloured and drooping. "He has fallen
+in a joust with spears," I said to myself; "yet it becomes not a noble
+knight to be conquered in spirit because his body hath fallen." He
+appeared not to observe me, for he was riding past without looking up,
+and started into a warlike attitude the moment the first sound of my
+voice reached him. Then a flush, as of shame, covered all of his face
+that the lifted beaver disclosed. He returned my greeting with distant
+courtesy, and passed on. But suddenly, he reined up, sat a moment still,
+and then turning his horse, rode back to where I stood looking after
+him.
+
+"I am ashamed," he said, "to appear a knight, and in such a guise; but
+it behoves me to tell you to take warning from me, lest the same evil,
+in his kind, overtake the singer that has befallen the knight. Hast thou
+ever read the story of Sir Percival and the"--(here he shuddered, that
+his armour rang)--"Maiden of the Alder-tree?"
+
+"In part, I have," said I; "for yesterday, at the entrance of this
+forest, I found in a cottage the volume wherein it is recorded." "Then
+take heed," he rejoined; "for, see my armour--I put it off; and as it
+befell to him, so has it befallen to me. I that was proud am humble now.
+Yet is she terribly beautiful--beware. Never," he added, raising his
+head, "shall this armour be furbished, but by the blows of knightly
+encounter, until the last speck has disappeared from every spot where
+the battle-axe and sword of evil-doers, or noble foes, might fall; when
+I shall again lift my head, and say to my squire, 'Do thy duty once
+more, and make this armour shine.'"
+
+Before I could inquire further, he had struck spurs into his horse and
+galloped away, shrouded from my voice in the noise of his armour. For I
+called after him, anxious to know more about this fearful enchantress;
+but in vain--he heard me not. "Yet," I said to myself, "I have now
+been often warned; surely I shall be well on my guard; and I am fully
+resolved I shall not be ensnared by any beauty, however beautiful.
+Doubtless, some one man may escape, and I shall be he." So I went on
+into the wood, still hoping to find, in some one of its mysterious
+recesses, my lost lady of the marble. The sunny afternoon died into
+the loveliest twilight. Great bats began to flit about with their own
+noiseless flight, seemingly purposeless, because its objects are unseen.
+The monotonous music of the owl issued from all unexpected quarters in
+the half-darkness around me. The glow-worm was alight here and there,
+burning out into the great universe. The night-hawk heightened all the
+harmony and stillness with his oft-recurring, discordant jar.
+Numberless unknown sounds came out of the unknown dusk; but all were of
+twilight-kind, oppressing the heart as with a condensed atmosphere of
+dreamy undefined love and longing. The odours of night arose, and bathed
+me in that luxurious mournfulness peculiar to them, as if the plants
+whence they floated had been watered with bygone tears. Earth drew me
+towards her bosom; I felt as if I could fall down and kiss her. I forgot
+I was in Fairy Land, and seemed to be walking in a perfect night of
+our own old nursing earth. Great stems rose about me, uplifting a thick
+multitudinous roof above me of branches, and twigs, and leaves--the bird
+and insect world uplifted over mine, with its own landscapes, its own
+thickets, and paths, and glades, and dwellings; its own bird-ways and
+insect-delights. Great boughs crossed my path; great roots based the
+tree-columns, and mightily clasped the earth, strong to lift and strong
+to uphold. It seemed an old, old forest, perfect in forest ways and
+pleasures. And when, in the midst of this ecstacy, I remembered that
+under some close canopy of leaves, by some giant stem, or in some mossy
+cave, or beside some leafy well, sat the lady of the marble, whom my
+songs had called forth into the outer world, waiting (might it not
+be?) to meet and thank her deliverer in a twilight which would veil her
+confusion, the whole night became one dream-realm of joy, the central
+form of which was everywhere present, although unbeheld. Then,
+remembering how my songs seemed to have called her from the marble,
+piercing through the pearly shroud of alabaster--"Why," thought I,
+"should not my voice reach her now, through the ebon night that
+inwraps her." My voice burst into song so spontaneously that it seemed
+involuntarily.
+
+            "Not a sound
+             But, echoing in me,
+             Vibrates all around
+             With a blind delight,
+             Till it breaks on Thee,
+             Queen of Night!
+
+             Every tree,
+             O'ershadowing with gloom,
+             Seems to cover thee
+             Secret, dark, love-still'd,
+             In a holy room
+             Silence-filled.
+
+            "Let no moon
+             Creep up the heaven to-night;
+             I in darksome noon
+             Walking hopefully,
+             Seek my shrouded light--
+             Grope for thee!
+
+            "Darker grow
+             The borders of the dark!
+             Through the branches glow,
+             From the roof above,
+             Star and diamond-sparks
+             Light for love."
+
+
+Scarcely had the last sounds floated away from the hearing of my own
+ears, when I heard instead a low delicious laugh near me. It was not the
+laugh of one who would not be heard, but the laugh of one who has just
+received something long and patiently desired--a laugh that ends in
+a low musical moan. I started, and, turning sideways, saw a dim white
+figure seated beside an intertwining thicket of smaller trees and
+underwood.
+
+"It is my white lady!" I said, and flung myself on the ground beside
+her; striving, through the gathering darkness, to get a glimpse of the
+form which had broken its marble prison at my call.
+
+"It is your white lady!" said the sweetest voice, in reply, sending a
+thrill of speechless delight through a heart which all the love-charms
+of the preceding day and evening had been tempering for this culminating
+hour. Yet, if I would have confessed it, there was something either in
+the sound of the voice, although it seemed sweetness itself, or else in
+this yielding which awaited no gradation of gentle approaches, that did
+not vibrate harmoniously with the beat of my inward music. And likewise,
+when, taking her hand in mine, I drew closer to her, looking for the
+beauty of her face, which, indeed, I found too plenteously, a cold
+shiver ran through me; but "it is the marble," I said to myself, and
+heeded it not.
+
+She withdrew her hand from mine, and after that would scarce allow me to
+touch her. It seemed strange, after the fulness of her first greeting,
+that she could not trust me to come close to her. Though her words
+were those of a lover, she kept herself withdrawn as if a mile of space
+interposed between us.
+
+"Why did you run away from me when you woke in the cave?" I said.
+
+"Did I?" she returned. "That was very unkind of me; but I did not know
+better."
+
+"I wish I could see you. The night is very dark."
+
+"So it is. Come to my grotto. There is light there."
+
+"Have you another cave, then?"
+
+"Come and see."
+
+But she did not move until I rose first, and then she was on her feet
+before I could offer my hand to help her. She came close to my side, and
+conducted me through the wood. But once or twice, when, involuntarily
+almost, I was about to put my arm around her as we walked on through the
+warm gloom, she sprang away several paces, always keeping her face full
+towards me, and then stood looking at me, slightly stooping, in the
+attitude of one who fears some half-seen enemy. It was too dark to
+discern the expression of her face. Then she would return and walk close
+beside me again, as if nothing had happened. I thought this strange;
+but, besides that I had almost, as I said before, given up the attempt
+to account for appearances in Fairy Land, I judged that it would be very
+unfair to expect from one who had slept so long and had been so suddenly
+awakened, a behaviour correspondent to what I might unreflectingly look
+for. I knew not what she might have been dreaming about. Besides, it was
+possible that, while her words were free, her sense of touch might be
+exquisitely delicate.
+
+At length, after walking a long way in the woods, we arrived at another
+thicket, through the intertexture of which was glimmering a pale rosy
+light.
+
+ "Push aside the branches," she said, "and make room for us to
+enter."
+
+I did as she told me.
+
+"Go in," she said; "I will follow you."
+
+I did as she desired, and found myself in a little cave, not very unlike
+the marble cave. It was festooned and draperied with all kinds of
+green that cling to shady rocks. In the furthest corner, half-hidden in
+leaves, through which it glowed, mingling lovely shadows between them,
+burned a bright rosy flame on a little earthen lamp. The lady glided
+round by the wall from behind me, still keeping her face towards me, and
+seated herself in the furthest corner, with her back to the lamp, which
+she hid completely from my view. I then saw indeed a form of perfect
+loveliness before me. Almost it seemed as if the light of the rose-lamp
+shone through her (for it could not be reflected from her); such a
+delicate shade of pink seemed to shadow what in itself must be a marbly
+whiteness of hue. I discovered afterwards, however, that there was one
+thing in it I did not like; which was, that the white part of the eye
+was tinged with the same slight roseate hue as the rest of the form. It
+is strange that I cannot recall her features; but they, as well as her
+somewhat girlish figure, left on me simply and only the impression of
+intense loveliness. I lay down at her feet, and gazed up into her face
+as I lay. She began, and told me a strange tale, which, likewise, I
+cannot recollect; but which, at every turn and every pause, somehow or
+other fixed my eyes and thoughts upon her extreme beauty; seeming always
+to culminate in something that had a relation, revealed or hidden, but
+always operative, with her own loveliness. I lay entranced. It was a
+tale which brings back a feeling as of snows and tempests; torrents
+and water-sprites; lovers parted for long, and meeting at last; with a
+gorgeous summer night to close up the whole. I listened till she and I
+were blended with the tale; till she and I were the whole history. And
+we had met at last in this same cave of greenery, while the summer night
+hung round us heavy with love, and the odours that crept through the
+silence from the sleeping woods were the only signs of an outer world
+that invaded our solitude. What followed I cannot clearly remember. The
+succeeding horror almost obliterated it. I woke as a grey dawn stole
+into the cave. The damsel had disappeared; but in the shrubbery, at the
+mouth of the cave, stood a strange horrible object. It looked like an
+open coffin set up on one end; only that the part for the head and
+neck was defined from the shoulder-part. In fact, it was a rough
+representation of the human frame, only hollow, as if made of decaying
+bark torn from a tree.
+
+It had arms, which were only slightly seamed, down from the
+shoulder-blade by the elbow, as if the bark had healed again from the
+cut of a knife. But the arms moved, and the hand and the fingers were
+tearing asunder a long silky tress of hair. The thing turned round--it
+had for a face and front those of my enchantress, but now of a pale
+greenish hue in the light of the morning, and with dead lustreless eyes.
+In the horror of the moment, another fear invaded me. I put my hand to
+my waist, and found indeed that my girdle of beech-leaves was gone.
+Hair again in her hands, she was tearing it fiercely. Once more, as she
+turned, she laughed a low laugh, but now full of scorn and derision; and
+then she said, as if to a companion with whom she had been talking while
+I slept, "There he is; you can take him now." I lay still, petrified
+with dismay and fear; for I now saw another figure beside her, which,
+although vague and indistinct, I yet recognised but too well. It was the
+Ash-tree. My beauty was the Maid of the Alder! and she was giving
+me, spoiled of my only availing defence, into the hands of my awful foe.
+The Ash bent his Gorgon-head, and entered the cave. I could not stir.
+He drew near me. His ghoul-eyes and his ghastly face fascinated me.
+He came stooping, with the hideous hand outstretched, like a beast of
+prey. I had given myself up to a death of unfathomable horror, when,
+suddenly, and just as he was on the point of seizing me, the dull,
+heavy blow of an axe echoed through the wood, followed by others in
+quick repetition. The Ash shuddered and groaned, withdrew the
+outstretched hand, retreated backwards to the mouth of the cave, then
+turned and disappeared amongst the trees. The other walking Death
+looked at me once, with a careless dislike on her beautifully moulded
+features; then, heedless any more to conceal her hollow deformity,
+turned her frightful back and likewise vanished amid the green
+obscurity without. I lay and wept. The Maid of the Alder-tree had
+befooled me--nearly slain me--in spite of all the warnings I had
+received from those who knew my danger.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+         "Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew sayes,
+          A little I am hurt, but yett not slaine;
+          I'le but lye downe and bleede awhile,
+          And then I'le rise and fight againe."
+                        Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton.
+
+But I could not remain where I was any longer, though the daylight was
+hateful to me, and the thought of the great, innocent, bold sunrise
+unendurable. Here there was no well to cool my face, smarting with the
+bitterness of my own tears. Nor would I have washed in the well of
+that grotto, had it flowed clear as the rivers of Paradise. I rose, and
+feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not whither, but
+still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing; but not for me. All
+the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had nothing to
+do, and to which I cared not to find the key any more.
+
+I walked listlessly along. What distressed me most--more even than my
+own folly--was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness
+dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and her face of dislike;
+disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a
+living, walking sepulchre, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt
+notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered
+with undiminished perplexity, though not without some gain. Then I began
+to make surmises as to the mode of my deliverance; and concluded that
+some hero, wandering in search of adventure, had heard how the forest
+was infested; and, knowing it was useless to attack the evil thing in
+person, had assailed with his battle-axe the body in which he dwelt, and
+on which he was dependent for his power of mischief in the wood. "Very
+likely," I thought, "the repentant-knight, who warned me of the evil
+which has befallen me, was busy retrieving his lost honour, while I was
+sinking into the same sorrow with himself; and, hearing of the dangerous
+and mysterious being, arrived at his tree in time to save me from being
+dragged to its roots, and buried like carrion, to nourish him for
+yet deeper insatiableness." I found afterwards that my conjecture was
+correct. I wondered how he had fared when his blows recalled the Ash
+himself, and that too I learned afterwards.
+
+I walked on the whole day, with intervals of rest, but without food; for
+I could not have eaten, had any been offered me; till, in the afternoon,
+I seemed to approach the outskirts of the forest, and at length arrived
+at a farm-house. An unspeakable joy arose in my heart at beholding an
+abode of human beings once more, and I hastened up to the door, and
+knocked. A kind-looking, matronly woman, still handsome, made her
+appearance; who, as soon as she saw me, said kindly, "Ah, my poor boy,
+you have come from the wood! Were you in it last night?"
+
+I should have ill endured, the day before, to be called BOY; but now the
+motherly kindness of the word went to my heart; and, like a boy indeed,
+I burst into tears. She soothed me right gently; and, leading me into
+a room, made me lie down on a settle, while she went to find me some
+refreshment. She soon returned with food, but I could not eat. She
+almost compelled me to swallow some wine, when I revived sufficiently to
+be able to answer some of her questions. I told her the whole story.
+
+"It is just as I feared," she said; "but you are now for the night
+beyond the reach of any of these dreadful creatures. It is no wonder
+they could delude a child like you. But I must beg you, when my husband
+comes in, not to say a word about these things; for he thinks me even
+half crazy for believing anything of the sort. But I must believe my
+senses, as he cannot believe beyond his, which give him no intimations
+of this kind. I think he could spend the whole of Midsummer-eve in
+the wood and come back with the report that he saw nothing worse than
+himself. Indeed, good man, he would hardly find anything better than
+himself, if he had seven more senses given him."
+
+"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart
+at all--without any place even for a heart to live in."
+
+"I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so
+beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful
+than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with
+her before you saw her beauty, mistaking her for the lady of the
+marble--another kind altogether, I should think. But the chief thing
+that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she
+loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her
+desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love
+either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty,
+through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely--with a
+self-destructive beauty, though; for it is that which is constantly
+wearing her away within, till, at last, the decay will reach her face,
+and her whole front, when all the lovely mask of nothing will fall to
+pieces, and she be vanished for ever. So a wise man, whom she met in
+the wood some years ago, and who, I think, for all his wisdom, fared no
+better than you, told me, when, like you, he spent the next night here,
+and recounted to me his adventures."
+
+I thanked her very warmly for her solution, though it was but partial;
+wondering much that in her, as in woman I met on my first entering the
+forest, there should be such superiority to her apparent condition. Here
+she left me to take some rest; though, indeed, I was too much agitated
+to rest in any other way than by simply ceasing to move.
+
+In half an hour, I heard a heavy step approach and enter the house. A
+jolly voice, whose slight huskiness appeared to proceed from overmuch
+laughter, called out "Betsy, the pigs' trough is quite empty, and that
+is a pity. Let them swill, lass! They're of no use but to get fat. Ha!
+ha! ha! Gluttony is not forbidden in their commandments. Ha! ha! ha!"
+The very voice, kind and jovial, seemed to disrobe the room of the
+strange look which all new places wear--to disenchant it out of the
+realm of the ideal into that of the actual. It began to look as if I
+had known every corner of it for twenty years; and when, soon after, the
+dame came and fetched me to partake of their early supper, the grasp of
+his great hand, and the harvest-moon of his benevolent face, which was
+needed to light up the rotundity of the globe beneath it, produced such
+a reaction in me, that, for a moment, I could hardly believe that there
+was a Fairy Land; and that all I had passed through since I left home,
+had not been the wandering dream of a diseased imagination, operating on
+a too mobile frame, not merely causing me indeed to travel, but peopling
+for me with vague phantoms the regions through which my actual steps
+had led me. But the next moment my eye fell upon a little girl who was
+sitting in the chimney-corner, with a little book open on her knee, from
+which she had apparently just looked up to fix great inquiring eyes upon
+me. I believed in Fairy Land again. She went on with her reading, as
+soon as she saw that I observed her looking at me. I went near, and
+peeping over her shoulder, saw that she was reading "The History of
+Graciosa and Percinet."
+
+"Very improving book, sir," remarked the old farmer, with a
+good-humoured laugh. "We are in the very hottest corner of Fairy Land
+here. Ha! ha! Stormy night, last night, sir."
+
+"Was it, indeed?" I rejoined. "It was not so with me. A lovelier night I
+never saw." "Indeed! Where were you last night?"
+
+"I spent it in the forest. I had lost my way."
+
+"Ah! then, perhaps, you will be able to convince my good woman, that
+there is nothing very remarkable about the forest; for, to tell the
+truth, it bears but a bad name in these parts. I dare say you saw
+nothing worse than yourself there?"
+
+"I hope I did," was my inward reply; but, for an audible one, I
+contented myself with saying, "Why, I certainly did see some appearances
+I could hardly account for; but that is nothing to be wondered at in an
+unknown wild forest, and with the uncertain light of the moon alone to
+go by."
+
+"Very true! you speak like a sensible man, sir. We have but few sensible
+folks round about us. Now, you would hardly credit it, but my wife
+believes every fairy-tale that ever was written. I cannot account for
+it. She is a most sensible woman in everything else."
+
+"But should not that make you treat her belief with something of
+respect, though you cannot share in it yourself?"
+
+"Yes, that is all very well in theory; but when you come to live
+every day in the midst of absurdity, it is far less easy to behave
+respectfully to it. Why, my wife actually believes the story of the
+'White Cat.' You know it, I dare say."
+
+"I read all these tales when a child, and know that one especially
+well."
+
+"But, father," interposed the little girl in the chimney-corner, "you
+know quite well that mother is descended from that very princess who was
+changed by the wicked fairy into a white cat. Mother has told me so a
+many times, and you ought to believe everything she says."
+
+"I can easily believe that," rejoined the farmer, with another fit of
+laughter; "for, the other night, a mouse came gnawing and scratching
+beneath the floor, and would not let us go to sleep. Your mother sprang
+out of bed, and going as near it as she could, mewed so infernally like
+a great cat, that the noise ceased instantly. I believe the poor mouse
+died of the fright, for we have never heard it again. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+The son, an ill-looking youth, who had entered during the conversation,
+joined in his father's laugh; but his laugh was very different from the
+old man's: it was polluted with a sneer. I watched him, and saw that,
+as soon as it was over, he looked scared, as if he dreaded some evil
+consequences to follow his presumption. The woman stood near, waiting
+till we should seat ourselves at the table, and listening to it all
+with an amused air, which had something in it of the look with which one
+listens to the sententious remarks of a pompous child. We sat down to
+supper, and I ate heartily. My bygone distresses began already to look
+far off.
+
+"In what direction are you going?" asked the old man.
+
+"Eastward," I replied; nor could I have given a more definite answer.
+"Does the forest extend much further in that direction?"
+
+"Oh! for miles and miles; I do not know how far. For although I have
+lived on the borders of it all my life, I have been too busy to make
+journeys of discovery into it. Nor do I see what I could discover. It
+is only trees and trees, till one is sick of them. By the way, if you
+follow the eastward track from here, you will pass close to what the
+children say is the very house of the ogre that Hop-o'-my-Thumb visited,
+and ate his little daughters with the crowns of gold."
+
+"Oh, father! ate his little daughters! No; he only changed their gold
+crowns for nightcaps; and the great long-toothed ogre killed them in
+mistake; but I do not think even he ate them, for you know they were his
+own little ogresses."
+
+"Well, well, child; you know all about it a great deal better than I do.
+However, the house has, of course, in such a foolish neighbourhood as
+this, a bad enough name; and I must confess there is a woman living
+in it, with teeth long enough, and white enough too, for the lineal
+descendant of the greatest ogre that ever was made. I think you had
+better not go near her."
+
+In such talk as this the night wore on. When supper was finished, which
+lasted some time, my hostess conducted me to my chamber.
+
+"If you had not had enough of it already," she said, "I would have put
+you in another room, which looks towards the forest; and where you
+would most likely have seen something more of its inhabitants. For they
+frequently pass the window, and even enter the room sometimes. Strange
+creatures spend whole nights in it, at certain seasons of the year. I am
+used to it, and do not mind it. No more does my little girl, who sleeps
+in it always. But this room looks southward towards the open country,
+and they never show themselves here; at least I never saw any."
+
+I was somewhat sorry not to gather any experience that I might have, of
+the inhabitants of Fairy Land; but the effect of the farmer's company,
+and of my own later adventures, was such, that I chose rather an
+undisturbed night in my more human quarters; which, with their clean
+white curtains and white linen, were very inviting to my weariness.
+
+In the morning I awoke refreshed, after a profound and dreamless sleep.
+The sun was high, when I looked out of the window, shining over a wide,
+undulating, cultivated country. Various garden-vegetables were growing
+beneath my window. Everything was radiant with clear sunlight. The
+dew-drops were sparkling their busiest; the cows in a near-by field were
+eating as if they had not been at it all day yesterday; the maids were
+singing at their work as they passed to and fro between the out-houses:
+I did not believe in Fairy Land. I went down, and found the family
+already at breakfast. But before I entered the room where they sat, the
+little girl came to me, and looked up in my face, as though she wanted
+to say something to me. I stooped towards her; she put her arms round my
+neck, and her mouth to my ear, and whispered--
+
+"A white lady has been flitting about the house all night."
+
+"No whispering behind doors!" cried the farmer; and we entered together.
+"Well, how have you slept? No bogies, eh?"
+
+"Not one, thank you; I slept uncommonly well."
+
+"I am glad to hear it. Come and breakfast."
+
+After breakfast, the farmer and his son went out; and I was left alone
+with the mother and daughter.
+
+"When I looked out of the window this morning," I said, "I felt almost
+certain that Fairy Land was all a delusion of my brain; but whenever I
+come near you or your little daughter, I feel differently. Yet I could
+persuade myself, after my last adventures, to go back, and have nothing
+more to do with such strange beings."
+
+"How will you go back?" said the woman.
+
+"Nay, that I do not know."
+
+"Because I have heard, that, for those who enter Fairy Land, there is no
+way of going back. They must go on, and go through it. How, I do not in
+the least know."
+
+"That is quite the impression on my own mind. Something compels me to go
+on, as if my only path was onward, but I feel less inclined this morning
+to continue my adventures."
+
+"Will you come and see my little child's room? She sleeps in the one I
+told you of, looking towards the forest."
+
+"Willingly," I said.
+
+So we went together, the little girl running before to open the door for
+us. It was a large room, full of old-fashioned furniture, that seemed to
+have once belonged to some great house.
+
+The window was built with a low arch, and filled with lozenge-shaped
+panes. The wall was very thick, and built of solid stone. I could see
+that part of the house had been erected against the remains of some old
+castle or abbey, or other great building; the fallen stones of which
+had probably served to complete it. But as soon as I looked out of the
+window, a gush of wonderment and longing flowed over my soul like the
+tide of a great sea. Fairy Land lay before me, and drew me towards it
+with an irresistible attraction. The trees bathed their great heads in
+the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom;
+save where on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or
+swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue
+all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the
+decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the
+long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over
+which it passed in motionless rivers of light. I turned hurriedly to bid
+my hostess farewell without further delay. She smiled at my haste, but
+with an anxious look.
+
+"You had better not go near the house of the ogre, I think. My son will
+show you into another path, which will join the first beyond it."
+
+Not wishing to be headstrong or too confident any more, I agreed;
+and having taken leave of my kind entertainers, went into the wood,
+accompanied by the youth. He scarcely spoke as we went along; but he led
+me through the trees till we struck upon a path. He told me to follow
+it, and, with a muttered "good morning" left me.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     "I am a part of the part, which at first was the whole."
+     GOETHE.--Mephistopheles in Faust.
+
+My spirits rose as I went deeper; into the forest; but I could not
+regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like
+life itself--not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned,
+that the best way to manage some kinds of pain filled thoughts, is to dare
+them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they
+are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot
+kill. So, better and worse, I went on, till I came to a little clearing
+in the forest. In the middle of this clearing stood a long, low hut,
+built with one end against a single tall cypress, which rose like a
+spire to the building. A vague misgiving crossed my mind when I saw it;
+but I must needs go closer, and look through a little half-open door,
+near the opposite end from the cypress. Window I saw none. On peeping
+in, and looking towards the further end, I saw a lamp burning, with
+a dim, reddish flame, and the head of a woman, bent downwards, as if
+reading by its light. I could see nothing more for a few moments. At
+length, as my eyes got used to the dimness of the place, I saw that the
+part of the rude building near me was used for household purposes;
+for several rough utensils lay here and there, and a bed stood in the
+corner.
+
+An irresistible attraction caused me to enter. The woman never raised
+her face, the upper part of which alone I could see distinctly; but, as
+soon as I stepped within the threshold, she began to read aloud, in a
+low and not altogether unpleasing voice, from an ancient little volume
+which she held open with one hand on the table upon which stood the
+lamp. What she read was something like this:
+
+"So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever have
+an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught else, is its
+affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there abideth the darkness.
+The light doth but hollow a mine out of the infinite extension of the
+darkness. And ever upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness;
+yea, springeth in fountains and wells amidst it, from the secret
+channels of its mighty sea. Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving
+unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night; without which he yet could
+not be, and whereof he is in part compounded."
+
+As I drew nearer, and she read on, she moved a little to turn a leaf
+of the dark old volume, and I saw that her face was sallow and slightly
+forbidding. Her forehead was high, and her black eyes repressedly quiet.
+But she took no notice of me. This end of the cottage, if cottage it
+could be called, was destitute of furniture, except the table with the
+lamp, and the chair on which the woman sat. In one corner was a door,
+apparently of a cupboard in the wall, but which might lead to a room
+beyond. Still the irresistible desire which had made me enter the
+building urged me: I must open that door, and see what was beyond it.
+I approached, and laid my hand on the rude latch. Then the woman spoke,
+but without lifting her head or looking at me: "You had better not open
+that door." This was uttered quite quietly; and she went on with her
+reading, partly in silence, partly aloud; but both modes seemed equally
+intended for herself alone. The prohibition, however, only increased my
+desire to see; and as she took no further notice, I gently opened the
+door to its full width, and looked in. At first, I saw nothing worthy
+of attention. It seemed a common closet, with shelves on each hand, on
+which stood various little necessaries for the humble uses of a cottage.
+In one corner stood one or two brooms, in another a hatchet and other
+common tools; showing that it was in use every hour of the day for
+household purposes. But, as I looked, I saw that there were no shelves
+at the back, and that an empty space went in further; its termination
+appearing to be a faintly glimmering wall or curtain, somewhat less,
+however, than the width and height of the doorway where I stood. But,
+as I continued looking, for a few seconds, towards this faintly luminous
+limit, my eyes came into true relation with their object. All at once,
+with such a shiver as when one is suddenly conscious of the presence of
+another in a room where he has, for hours, considered himself alone, I
+saw that the seemingly luminous extremity was a sky, as of night, beheld
+through the long perspective of a narrow, dark passage, through what, or
+built of what, I could not tell. As I gazed, I clearly discerned two or
+three stars glimmering faintly in the distant blue. But, suddenly, and
+as if it had been running fast from a far distance for this very point,
+and had turned the corner without abating its swiftness, a dark figure
+sped into and along the passage from the blue opening at the remote end.
+I started back and shuddered, but kept looking, for I could not help it.
+On and on it came, with a speedy approach but delayed arrival; till, at
+last, through the many gradations of approach, it seemed to come within
+the sphere of myself, rushed up to me, and passed me into the cottage.
+All I could tell of its appearance was, that it seemed to be a dark
+human figure. Its motion was entirely noiseless, and might be called a
+gliding, were it not that it appeared that of a runner, but with ghostly
+feet. I had moved back yet a little to let him pass me, and looked round
+after him instantly. I could not see him.
+
+"Where is he?" I said, in some alarm, to the woman, who still sat
+reading.
+
+"There, on the floor, behind you," she said, pointing with her arm
+half-outstretched, but not lifting her eyes. I turned and looked, but
+saw nothing. Then with a feeling that there was yet something behind me,
+I looked round over my shoulder; and there, on the ground, lay a black
+shadow, the size of a man. It was so dark, that I could see it in the
+dim light of the lamp, which shone full upon it, apparently without
+thinning at all the intensity of its hue.
+
+"I told you," said the woman, "you had better not look into that
+closet."
+
+"What is it?" I said, with a growing sense of horror.
+
+"It is only your shadow that has found you," she replied. "Everybody's
+shadow is ranging up and down looking for him. I believe you call it by
+a different name in your world: yours has found you, as every person's
+is almost certain to do who looks into that closet, especially after
+meeting one in the forest, whom I dare say you have met."
+
+Here, for the first time, she lifted her head, and looked full at me:
+her mouth was full of long, white, shining teeth; and I knew that I was
+in the house of the ogre. I could not speak, but turned and left the
+house, with the shadow at my heels. "A nice sort of valet to have," I
+said to myself bitterly, as I stepped into the sunshine, and, looking
+over my shoulder, saw that it lay yet blacker in the full blaze of the
+sunlight. Indeed, only when I stood between it and the sun, was the
+blackness at all diminished. I was so bewildered--stunned--both by the
+event itself and its suddenness, that I could not at all realise to
+myself what it would be to have such a constant and strange attendance;
+but with a dim conviction that my present dislike would soon grow to
+loathing, I took my dreary way through the wood.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+        "O lady! we receive but what we give,
+         And in our life alone does nature live:
+         Ours is her wedding garments ours her shrorwd!
+                .  .  .  .  .
+         Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth,
+         A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,
+
+         Enveloping the Earth--
+         And from the soul itself must there be sent
+         A sweet and potent voice of its own birth,
+         Of all sweet sounds the life and element!"
+                                        COLERIDGE.
+
+From this time, until I arrived at the palace of Fairy Land, I can
+attempt no consecutive account of my wanderings and adventures.
+Everything, henceforward, existed for me in its relation to my
+attendant. What influence he exercised upon everything into contact with
+which I was brought, may be understood from a few detached instances. To
+begin with this very day on which he first joined me: after I had walked
+heartlessly along for two or three hours, I was very weary, and lay
+down to rest in a most delightful part of the forest, carpeted with wild
+flowers. I lay for half an hour in a dull repose, and then got up to
+pursue my way. The flowers on the spot where I had lain were crushed to
+the earth: but I saw that they would soon lift their heads and rejoice
+again in the sun and air. Not so those on which my shadow had lain. The
+very outline of it could be traced in the withered lifeless grass,
+and the scorched and shrivelled flowers which stood there, dead, and
+hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered, and hastened away with sad
+forebodings.
+
+In a few days, I had reason to dread an extension of its baleful
+influences from the fact, that it was no longer confined to one position
+in regard to myself. Hitherto, when seized with an irresistible desire
+to look on my evil demon (which longing would unaccountably seize me at
+any moment, returning at longer or shorter intervals, sometimes every
+minute), I had to turn my head backwards, and look over my shoulder; in
+which position, as long as I could retain it, I was fascinated. But one
+day, having come out on a clear grassy hill, which commanded a glorious
+prospect, though of what I cannot now tell, my shadow moved round, and
+came in front of me. And, presently, a new manifestation increased
+my distress. For it began to coruscate, and shoot out on all sides a
+radiation of dim shadow. These rays of gloom issued from the central
+shadow as from a black sun, lengthening and shortening with continual
+change. But wherever a ray struck, that part of earth, or sea, or
+sky, became void, and desert, and sad to my heart. On this, the first
+development of its new power, one ray shot out beyond the rest, seeming
+to lengthen infinitely, until it smote the great sun on the face, which
+withered and darkened beneath the blow. I turned away and went on. The
+shadow retreated to its former position; and when I looked again, it
+had drawn in all its spears of darkness, and followed like a dog at my
+heels.
+
+Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child,
+with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the tube through
+which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds the same thing
+everywhere; the other that through which he looks when he combines into
+new forms of loveliness those images of beauty which his own choice has
+gathered from all regions wherein he has travelled. Round the child's
+head was an aureole of emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and
+delight, round crept from behind me the something dark, and the child
+stood in my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough
+broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from behind.
+The toys he carried were a multiplying-glass and a kaleidoscope. I
+sighed and departed.
+
+One evening, as a great silent flood of western gold flowed through an
+avenue in the woods, down the stream, just as when I saw him first, came
+the sad knight, riding on his chestnut steed.
+
+But his armour did not shine half so red as when I saw him first.
+
+Many a blow of mighty sword and axe, turned aside by the strength of
+his mail, and glancing adown the surface, had swept from its path the
+fretted rust, and the glorious steel had answered the kindly blow with
+the thanks of returning light. These streaks and spots made his armour
+look like the floor of a forest in the sunlight. His forehead was higher
+than before, for the contracting wrinkles were nearly gone; and the
+sadness that remained on his face was the sadness of a dewy summer
+twilight, not that of a frosty autumn morn. He, too, had met the
+Alder-maiden as I, but he had plunged into the torrent of mighty deeds,
+and the stain was nearly washed away. No shadow followed him. He had
+not entered the dark house; he had not had time to open the closet door.
+"Will he ever look in?" I said to myself. "MUST his shadow find him some
+day?" But I could not answer my own questions.
+
+We travelled together for two days, and I began to love him. It was
+plain that he suspected my story in some degree; and I saw him once or
+twice looking curiously and anxiously at my attendant gloom, which all
+this time had remained very obsequiously behind me; but I offered no
+explanation, and he asked none. Shame at my neglect of his warning, and
+a horror which shrunk from even alluding to its cause, kept me silent;
+till, on the evening of the second day, some noble words from my
+companion roused all my heart; and I was at the point of falling on
+his neck, and telling him the whole story; seeking, if not for
+helpful advice, for of that I was hopeless, yet for the comfort of
+sympathy--when round slid the shadow and inwrapt my friend; and I could
+not trust him.
+
+The glory of his brow vanished; the light of his eye grew cold; and I
+held my peace. The next morning we parted.
+
+But the most dreadful thing of all was, that I now began to feel
+something like satisfaction in the presence of the shadow. I began to
+be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, "In a land like this,
+with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid to disenchant the
+things around me. He does away with all appearances, and shows me things
+in their true colour and form. And I am not one to be fooled with the
+vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where there is
+none. I will dare to behold things as they are. And if I live in a waste
+instead of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live." But of this
+a certain exercise of his power which soon followed quite cured me,
+turning my feelings towards him once more into loathing and distrust. It
+was thus:
+
+One bright noon, a little maiden joined me, coming through the wood in
+a direction at right angles to my path. She came along singing and
+dancing, happy as a child, though she seemed almost a woman. In her
+hands--now in one, now in another--she carried a small globe, bright and
+clear as the purest crystal. This seemed at once her plaything and her
+greatest treasure. At one moment, you would have thought her utterly
+careless of it, and at another, overwhelmed with anxiety for its safety.
+But I believe she was taking care of it all the time, perhaps not least
+when least occupied about it. She stopped by me with a smile, and bade
+me good day with the sweetest voice. I felt a wonderful liking to the
+child--for she produced on me more the impression of a child, though my
+understanding told me differently. We talked a little, and then walked
+on together in the direction I had been pursuing. I asked her about the
+globe she carried, but getting no definite answer, I held out my hand
+to take it. She drew back, and said, but smiling almost invitingly the
+while, "You must not touch it;"--then, after a moment's pause--"Or if
+you do, it must be very gently." I touched it with a finger. A slight
+vibratory motion arose in it, accompanied, or perhaps manifested, by
+a faint sweet sound. I touched it again, and the sound increased. I
+touched it the third time: a tiny torrent of harmony rolled out of the
+little globe. She would not let me touch it any more.
+
+We travelled on together all that day. She left me when twilight came
+on; but next day, at noon, she met me as before, and again we travelled
+till evening. The third day she came once more at noon, and we walked on
+together. Now, though we had talked about a great many things connected
+with Fairy Land, and the life she had led hitherto, I had never been
+able to learn anything about the globe. This day, however, as we went
+on, the shadow glided round and inwrapt the maiden. It could not change
+her. But my desire to know about the globe, which in his gloom began to
+waver as with an inward light, and to shoot out flashes of many-coloured
+flame, grew irresistible. I put out both my hands and laid hold of it.
+It began to sound as before. The sound rapidly increased, till it grew
+a low tempest of harmony, and the globe trembled, and quivered, and
+throbbed between my hands. I had not the heart to pull it away from the
+maiden, though I held it in spite of her attempts to take it from me;
+yes, I shame to say, in spite of her prayers, and, at last, her tears.
+The music went on growing in, intensity and complication of tones, and
+the globe vibrated and heaved; till at last it burst in our hands, and
+a black vapour broke upwards from out of it; then turned, as if blown
+sideways, and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the shadow in its
+blackness. She held fast the fragments, which I abandoned, and fled from
+me into the forest in the direction whence she had come, wailing like
+a child, and crying, "You have broken my globe; my globe is broken--my
+globe is broken!" I followed her, in the hope of comforting her; but
+had not pursued her far, before a sudden cold gust of wind bowed the
+tree-tops above us, and swept through their stems around us; a great
+cloud overspread the day, and a fierce tempest came on, in which I lost
+sight of her. It lies heavy on my heart to this hour. At night, ere I
+fall asleep, often, whatever I may be thinking about, I suddenly hear
+her voice, crying out, "You have broken my globe; my globe is broken;
+ah, my globe!"
+
+Here I will mention one more strange thing; but whether this peculiarity
+was owing to my shadow at all, I am not able to assure myself. I came
+to a village, the inhabitants of which could not at first sight be
+distinguished from the dwellers in our land. They rather avoided than
+sought my company, though they were very pleasant when I addressed them.
+But at last I observed, that whenever I came within a certain distance
+of any one of them, which distance, however, varied with different
+individuals, the whole appearance of the person began to change; and
+this change increased in degree as I approached. When I receded to the
+former distance, the former appearance was restored. The nature of the
+change was grotesque, following no fixed rule. The nearest resemblance
+to it that I know, is the distortion produced in your countenance when
+you look at it as reflected in a concave or convex surface--say, either
+side of a bright spoon. Of this phenomenon I first became aware in
+rather a ludicrous way. My host's daughter was a very pleasant pretty
+girl, who made herself more agreeable to me than most of those about me.
+For some days my companion-shadow had been less obtrusive than usual;
+and such was the reaction of spirits occasioned by the simple mitigation
+of torment, that, although I had cause enough besides to be gloomy, I
+felt light and comparatively happy. My impression is, that she was quite
+aware of the law of appearances that existed between the people of the
+place and myself, and had resolved to amuse herself at my expense; for
+one evening, after some jesting and raillery, she, somehow or other,
+provoked me to attempt to kiss her. But she was well defended from
+any assault of the kind. Her countenance became, of a sudden, absurdly
+hideous; the pretty mouth was elongated and otherwise amplified
+sufficiently to have allowed of six simultaneous kisses. I started back
+in bewildered dismay; she burst into the merriest fit of laughter, and
+ran from the room. I soon found that the same undefinable law of change
+operated between me and all the other villagers; and that, to feel I was
+in pleasant company, it was absolutely necessary for me to discover and
+observe the right focal distance between myself and each one with whom
+I had to do. This done, all went pleasantly enough. Whether, when I
+happened to neglect this precaution, I presented to them an equally
+ridiculous appearance, I did not ascertain; but I presume that the
+alteration was common to the approximating parties. I was likewise
+unable to determine whether I was a necessary party to the production of
+this strange transformation, or whether it took place as well, under the
+given circumstances, between the inhabitants themselves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+        "From Eden's bowers the full-fed rivers flow,
+         To guide the outcasts to the land of woe:
+         Our Earth one little toiling streamlet yields.
+         To guide the wanderers to the happy fields."
+
+ After leaving this village, where I had rested for nearly a
+week, I travelled through a desert region of dry sand and glittering
+rocks, peopled principally by goblin-fairies. When I first entered their
+domains, and, indeed, whenever I fell in with another tribe of them,
+they began mocking me with offered handfuls of gold and jewels, making
+hideous grimaces at me, and performing the most antic homage, as if they
+thought I expected reverence, and meant to humour me like a maniac. But
+ever, as soon as one cast his eyes on the shadow behind me, he made a
+wry face, partly of pity, partly of contempt, and looked ashamed, as
+if he had been caught doing something inhuman; then, throwing down his
+handful of gold, and ceasing all his grimaces, he stood aside to let me
+pass in peace, and made signs to his companions to do the like. I had no
+inclination to observe them much, for the shadow was in my heart as well
+as at my heels. I walked listlessly and almost hopelessly along, till I
+arrived one day at a small spring; which, bursting cool from the heart
+of a sun-heated rock, flowed somewhat southwards from the direction I
+had been taking. I drank of this spring, and found myself wonderfully
+refreshed. A kind of love to the cheerful little stream arose in my
+heart. It was born in a desert; but it seemed to say to itself, "I will
+flow, and sing, and lave my banks, till I make my desert a paradise."
+I thought I could not do better than follow it, and see what it made
+of it. So down with the stream I went, over rocky lands, burning with
+sunbeams. But the rivulet flowed not far, before a few blades of
+grass appeared on its banks, and then, here and there, a stunted bush.
+Sometimes it disappeared altogether under ground; and after I had
+wandered some distance, as near as I could guess, in the direction it
+seemed to take, I would suddenly hear it again, singing, sometimes far
+away to my right or left, amongst new rocks, over which it made new
+cataracts of watery melodies. The verdure on its banks increased as it
+flowed; other streams joined it; and at last, after many days' travel,
+I found myself, one gorgeous summer evening, resting by the side of a
+broad river, with a glorious horse-chestnut tree towering above me, and
+dropping its blossoms, milk-white and rosy-red, all about me. As I sat,
+a gush of joy sprang forth in my heart, and over flowed at my eyes.
+
+Through my tears, the whole landscape glimmered in such bewildering
+loveliness, that I felt as if I were entering Fairy Land for the first
+time, and some loving hand were waiting to cool my head, and a loving
+word to warm my heart. Roses, wild roses, everywhere! So plentiful were
+they, they not only perfumed the air, they seemed to dye it a faint
+rose-hue. The colour floated abroad with the scent, and clomb, and
+spread, until the whole west blushed and glowed with the gathered
+incense of roses. And my heart fainted with longing in my bosom.
+
+Could I but see the Spirit of the Earth, as I saw once the in dwelling
+woman of the beech-tree, and my beauty of the pale marble, I should be
+content. Content!--Oh, how gladly would I die of the light of her eyes!
+Yea, I would cease to be, if that would bring me one word of love from
+the one mouth. The twilight sank around, and infolded me with sleep. I
+slept as I had not slept for months. I did not awake till late in the
+morning; when, refreshed in body and mind, I rose as from the death that
+wipes out the sadness of life, and then dies itself in the new morrow.
+Again I followed the stream; now climbing a steep rocky bank that hemmed
+it in; now wading through long grasses and wild flowers in its path; now
+through meadows; and anon through woods that crowded down to the very
+lip of the water.
+
+At length, in a nook of the river, gloomy with the weight of overhanging
+foliage, and still and deep as a soul in which the torrent eddies of
+pain have hollowed a great gulf, and then, subsiding in violence, have
+left it full of a motionless, fathomless sorrow--I saw a little boat
+lying. So still was the water here, that the boat needed no fastening.
+It lay as if some one had just stepped ashore, and would in a moment
+return. But as there were no signs of presence, and no track through the
+thick bushes; and, moreover, as I was in Fairy Land where one does very
+much as he pleases, I forced my way to the brink, stepped into the boat,
+pushed it, with the help of the tree-branches, out into the stream,
+lay down in the bottom, and let my boat and me float whither the stream
+would carry us. I seemed to lose myself in the great flow of sky above
+me unbroken in its infinitude, except when now and then, coming nearer
+the shore at a bend in the river, a tree would sweep its mighty head
+silently above mine, and glide away back into the past, never more to
+fling its shadow over me. I fell asleep in this cradle, in which mother
+Nature was rocking her weary child; and while I slept, the sun slept
+not, but went round his arched way. When I awoke, he slept in the
+waters, and I went on my silent path beneath a round silvery moon. And
+a pale moon looked up from the floor of the great blue cave that lay in
+the abysmal silence beneath.
+
+Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality?--not
+so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the
+gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting
+sail below is fairer still. Yea, the reflecting ocean itself, reflected
+in the mirror, has a wondrousness about its waters that somewhat
+vanishes when I turn towards itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The
+commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass. (And this
+reminds me, while I write, of a strange story which I read in the fairy
+palace, and of which I will try to make a feeble memorial in its place.)
+In whatever way it may be accounted for, of one thing we may be sure,
+that this feeling is no cheat; for there is no cheating in nature and
+the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved
+in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning. Even the
+memories of past pain are beautiful; and past delights, though beheld
+only through clefts in the grey clouds of sorrow, are lovely as Fairy
+Land. But how have I wandered into the deeper fairyland of the soul,
+while as yet I only float towards the fairy palace of Fairy Land! The
+moon, which is the lovelier memory or reflex of the down-gone sun, the
+joyous day seen in the faint mirror of the brooding night, had rapt me
+away.
+
+I sat up in the boat. Gigantic forest trees were about me; through
+which, like a silver snake, twisted and twined the great river. The
+little waves, when I moved in the boat, heaved and fell with a plash
+as of molten silver, breaking the image of the moon into a thousand
+morsels, fusing again into one, as the ripples of laughter die into the
+still face of joy. The sleeping woods, in undefined massiveness; the
+water that flowed in its sleep; and, above all, the enchantress moon,
+which had cast them all, with her pale eye, into the charmed slumber,
+sank into my soul, and I felt as if I had died in a dream, and should
+never more awake.
+
+From this I was partly aroused by a glimmering of white, that, through
+the trees on the left, vaguely crossed my vision, as I gazed upwards.
+But the trees again hid the object; and at the moment, some strange
+melodious bird took up its song, and sang, not an ordinary bird-song,
+with constant repetitions of the same melody, but what sounded like
+a continuous strain, in which one thought was expressed, deepening in
+intensity as evolved in progress. It sounded like a welcome already
+overshadowed with the coming farewell. As in all sweetest music, a tinge
+of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures
+even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold
+the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh
+white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she
+may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love.
+
+As the song concluded the stream bore my little boat with a gentle sweep
+round a bend of the river; and lo! on a broad lawn, which rose from the
+water's edge with a long green slope to a clear elevation from which the
+trees receded on all sides, stood a stately palace glimmering ghostly in
+the moonshine: it seemed to be built throughout of the whitest marble.
+There was no reflection of moonlight from windows--there seemed to be
+none; so there was no cold glitter; only, as I said, a ghostly shimmer.
+Numberless shadows tempered the shine, from column and balcony and
+tower. For everywhere galleries ran along the face of the buildings;
+wings were extended in many directions; and numberless openings, through
+which the moonbeams vanished into the interior, and which served
+both for doors and windows, had their separate balconies in front,
+communicating with a common gallery that rose on its own pillars.
+Of course, I did not discover all this from the river, and in the
+moonlight. But, though I was there for many days, I did not succeed
+in mastering the inner topography of the building, so extensive and
+complicated was it.
+
+Here I wished to land, but the boat had no oars on board. However, I
+found that a plank, serving for a seat, was unfastened, and with that I
+brought the boat to the bank and scrambled on shore. Deep soft turf sank
+beneath my feet, as I went up the ascent towards the palace.
+
+When I reached it, I saw that it stood on a great platform of marble,
+with an ascent, by broad stairs of the same, all round it. Arrived on
+the platform, I found there was an extensive outlook over the forest,
+which, however, was rather veiled than revealed by the moonlight.
+
+Entering by a wide gateway, but without gates, into an inner court,
+surrounded on all sides by great marble pillars supporting galleries
+above, I saw a large fountain of porphyry in the middle, throwing up a
+lofty column of water, which fell, with a noise as of the fusion of all
+sweet sounds, into a basin beneath; overflowing which, it ran into a
+single channel towards the interior of the building. Although the moon
+was by this time so low in the west, that not a ray of her light fell
+into the court, over the height of the surrounding buildings; yet was
+the court lighted by a second reflex from the sun of other lands. For
+the top of the column of water, just as it spread to fall, caught the
+moonbeams, and like a great pale lamp, hung high in the night air, threw
+a dim memory of light (as it were) over the court below. This court was
+paved in diamonds of white and red marble. According to my custom since
+I entered Fairy Land, of taking for a guide whatever I first found
+moving in any direction, I followed the stream from the basin of the
+fountain. It led me to a great open door, beneath the ascending steps of
+which it ran through a low arch and disappeared. Entering here, I found
+myself in a great hall, surrounded with white pillars, and paved with
+black and white. This I could see by the moonlight, which, from the
+other side, streamed through open windows into the hall.
+
+Its height I could not distinctly see. As soon as I entered, I had
+the feeling so common to me in the woods, that there were others
+there besides myself, though I could see no one, and heard no sound to
+indicate a presence. Since my visit to the Church of Darkness, my power
+of seeing the fairies of the higher orders had gradually diminished,
+until it had almost ceased. But I could frequently believe in their
+presence while unable to see them. Still, although I had company, and
+doubtless of a safe kind, it seemed rather dreary to spend the night in
+an empty marble hall, however beautiful, especially as the moon was near
+the going down, and it would soon be dark. So I began at the place where
+I entered, and walked round the hall, looking for some door or passage
+that might lead me to a more hospitable chamber. As I walked, I was
+deliciously haunted with the feeling that behind some one of the
+seemingly innumerable pillars, one who loved me was waiting for me. Then
+I thought she was following me from pillar to pillar as I went along;
+but no arms came out of the faint moonlight, and no sigh assured me of
+her presence.
+
+At length I came to an open corridor, into which I turned;
+notwithstanding that, in doing so, I left the light behind. Along this
+I walked with outstretched hands, groping my way, till, arriving at
+another corridor, which seemed to strike off at right angles to that in
+which I was, I saw at the end a faintly glimmering light, too pale even
+for moonshine, resembling rather a stray phosphorescence. However, where
+everything was white, a little light went a great way. So I walked on
+to the end, and a long corridor it was. When I came up to the light, I
+found that it proceeded from what looked like silver letters upon a door
+of ebony; and, to my surprise even in the home of wonder itself, the
+letters formed the words, THE CHAMBER OF SIR ANODOS. Although I had as
+yet no right to the honours of a knight, I ventured to conclude that
+the chamber was indeed intended for me; and, opening the door without
+hesitation, I entered. Any doubt as to whether I was right in so doing,
+was soon dispelled. What to my dark eyes seemed a blaze of light, burst
+upon me. A fire of large pieces of some sweet-scented wood, supported by
+dogs of silver, was burning on the hearth, and a bright lamp stood on a
+table, in the midst of a plentiful meal, apparently awaiting my arrival.
+But what surprised me more than all, was, that the room was in every
+respect a copy of my own room, the room whence the little stream from my
+basin had led me into Fairy Land. There was the very carpet of grass and
+moss and daisies, which I had myself designed; the curtains of pale blue
+silk, that fell like a cataract over the windows; the old-fashioned bed,
+with the chintz furniture, on which I had slept from boyhood. "Now I
+shall sleep," I said to myself. "My shadow dares not come here."
+
+I sat down to the table, and began to help myself to the good things
+before me with confidence. And now I found, as in many instances before,
+how true the fairy tales are; for I was waited on, all the time of my
+meal, by invisible hands. I had scarcely to do more than look towards
+anything I wanted, when it was brought me, just as if it had come to me
+of itself. My glass was kept filled with the wine I had chosen, until
+I looked towards another bottle or decanter; when a fresh glass was
+substituted, and the other wine supplied. When I had eaten and drank
+more heartily and joyfully than ever since I entered Fairy Land, the
+whole was removed by several attendants, of whom some were male and some
+female, as I thought I could distinguish from the way the dishes were
+lifted from the table, and the motion with which they were carried out
+of the room. As soon as they were all taken away, I heard a sound as of
+the shutting of a door, and knew that I was left alone. I sat long by
+the fire, meditating, and wondering how it would all end; and when at
+length, wearied with thinking, I betook myself to my own bed, it was
+half with a hope that, when I awoke in the morning, I should awake not
+only in my own room, but in my own castle also; and that I should walk,
+out upon my own native soil, and find that Fairy Land was, after all,
+only a vision of the night. The sound of the falling waters of the
+fountain floated me into oblivion.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+            "A wilderness of building, sinking far
+             And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
+             Far sinking into splendour--without end:
+             Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
+             With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
+             And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
+             Uplifted."
+                                        WORDSWORTH.
+
+But when, after a sleep, which, although dreamless, yet left behind it a
+sense of past blessedness, I awoke in the full morning, I found, indeed,
+that the room was still my own; but that it looked abroad upon an
+unknown landscape of forest and hill and dale on the one side--and on
+the other, upon the marble court, with the great fountain, the crest of
+which now flashed glorious in the sun, and cast on the pavement beneath
+a shower of faint shadows from the waters that fell from it into the
+marble basin below.
+
+Agreeably to all authentic accounts of the treatment of travellers in
+Fairy Land, I found by my bedside a complete suit of fresh clothing,
+just such as I was in the habit of wearing; for, though varied
+sufficiently from the one removed, it was yet in complete accordance
+with my tastes. I dressed myself in this, and went out. The whole palace
+shone like silver in the sun. The marble was partly dull and partly
+polished; and every pinnacle, dome, and turret ended in a ball, or cone,
+or cusp of silver. It was like frost-work, and too dazzling, in the sun,
+for earthly eyes like mine.
+
+I will not attempt to describe the environs, save by saying, that all
+the pleasures to be found in the most varied and artistic arrangement of
+wood and river, lawn and wild forest, garden and shrubbery, rocky hill
+and luxurious vale; in living creatures wild and tame, in gorgeous
+birds, scattered fountains, little streams, and reedy lakes--all were
+here. Some parts of the palace itself I shall have occasion to describe
+more minutely.
+
+For this whole morning I never thought of my demon shadow; and not till
+the weariness which supervened on delight brought it again to my
+memory, did I look round to see if it was behind me: it was scarcely
+discernible. But its presence, however faintly revealed, sent a pang to
+my heart, for the pain of which, not all the beauties around me could
+compensate. It was followed, however, by the comforting reflection that,
+peradventure, I might here find the magic word of power to banish
+the demon and set me free, so that I should no longer be a man beside
+myself. The Queen of Fairy Land, thought I, must dwell here: surely she
+will put forth her power to deliver me, and send me singing through
+the further gates of her country back to my own land. "Shadow of me!"
+I said; "which art not me, but which representest thyself to me as me;
+here I may find a shadow of light which will devour thee, the shadow of
+darkness! Here I may find a blessing which will fall on thee as a curse,
+and damn thee to the blackness whence thou hast emerged unbidden." I
+said this, stretched at length on the slope of the lawn above the river;
+and as the hope arose within me, the sun came forth from a light fleecy
+cloud that swept across his face; and hill and dale, and the great river
+winding on through the still mysterious forest, flashed back his rays as
+with a silent shout of joy; all nature lived and glowed; the very earth
+grew warm beneath me; a magnificent dragon-fly went past me like an
+arrow from a bow, and a whole concert of birds burst into choral song.
+
+The heat of the sun soon became too intense even for passive support. I
+therefore rose, and sought the shelter of one of the arcades. Wandering
+along from one to another of these, wherever my heedless steps led me,
+and wondering everywhere at the simple magnificence of the building, I
+arrived at another hall, the roof of which was of a pale blue, spangled
+with constellations of silver stars, and supported by porphyry pillars
+of a paler red than ordinary.--In this house (I may remark in passing),
+silver seemed everywhere preferred to gold; and such was the purity of
+the air, that it showed nowhere signs of tarnishing.--The whole of the
+floor of this hall, except a narrow path behind the pillars, paved with
+black, was hollowed into a huge basin, many feet deep, and filled with
+the purest, most liquid and radiant water. The sides of the basin were
+white marble, and the bottom was paved with all kinds of refulgent
+stones, of every shape and hue.
+
+In their arrangement, you would have supposed, at first sight, that
+there was no design, for they seemed to lie as if cast there from
+careless and playful hands; but it was a most harmonious confusion; and
+as I looked at the play of their colours, especially when the waters
+were in motion, I came at last to feel as if not one little pebble could
+be displaced, without injuring the effect of the whole. Beneath this
+floor of the water, lay the reflection of the blue inverted roof,
+fretted with its silver stars, like a second deeper sea, clasping and
+upholding the first. The fairy bath was probably fed from the fountain
+in the court. Led by an irresistible desire, I undressed, and plunged
+into the water. It clothed me as with a new sense and its object both in
+one. The waters lay so close to me, they seemed to enter and revive my
+heart. I rose to the surface, shook the water from my hair, and swam as
+in a rainbow, amid the coruscations of the gems below seen through the
+agitation caused by my motion. Then, with open eyes, I dived, and swam
+beneath the surface. And here was a new wonder. For the basin, thus
+beheld, appeared to extend on all sides like a sea, with here and there
+groups as of ocean rocks, hollowed by ceaseless billows into wondrous
+caves and grotesque pinnacles. Around the caves grew sea-weeds of all
+hues, and the corals glowed between; while far off, I saw the glimmer
+of what seemed to be creatures of human form at home in the waters. I
+thought I had been enchanted; and that when I rose to the surface, I
+should find myself miles from land, swimming alone upon a heaving
+sea; but when my eyes emerged from the waters, I saw above me the blue
+spangled vault, and the red pillars around. I dived again, and found
+myself once more in the heart of a great sea. I then arose, and swam to
+the edge, where I got out easily, for the water reached the very brim,
+and, as I drew near washed in tiny waves over the black marble border. I
+dressed, and went out, deeply refreshed.
+
+And now I began to discern faint, gracious forms, here and there
+throughout the building. Some walked together in earnest conversation.
+Others strayed alone. Some stood in groups, as if looking at and talking
+about a picture or a statue. None of them heeded me. Nor were they
+plainly visible to my eyes. Sometimes a group, or single individual,
+would fade entirely out of the realm of my vision as I gazed. When
+evening came, and the moon arose, clear as a round of a horizon-sea when
+the sun hangs over it in the west, I began to see them all more
+plainly; especially when they came between me and the moon; and yet more
+especially, when I myself was in the shade. But, even then, I sometimes
+saw only the passing wave of a white robe; or a lovely arm or neck
+gleamed by in the moonshine; or white feet went walking alone over the
+moony sward. Nor, I grieve to say, did I ever come much nearer to these
+glorious beings, or ever look upon the Queen of the Fairies herself. My
+destiny ordered otherwise.
+
+In this palace of marble and silver, and fountains and moonshine, I
+spent many days; waited upon constantly in my room with everything
+desirable, and bathing daily in the fairy bath. All this time I was
+little troubled with my demon shadow I had a vague feeling that he was
+somewhere about the palace; but it seemed as if the hope that I should
+in this place be finally freed from his hated presence, had sufficed to
+banish him for a time. How and where I found him, I shall soon have to
+relate.
+
+The third day after my arrival, I found the library of the palace; and
+here, all the time I remained, I spent most of the middle of the day.
+For it was, not to mention far greater attractions, a luxurious retreat
+from the noontide sun. During the mornings and afternoons, I wandered
+about the lovely neighbourhood, or lay, lost in delicious day-dreams,
+beneath some mighty tree on the open lawn. My evenings were by-and-by
+spent in a part of the palace, the account of which, and of my
+adventures in connection with it, I must yet postpone for a little.
+
+The library was a mighty hall, lighted from the roof, which was formed
+of something like glass, vaulted over in a single piece, and stained
+throughout with a great mysterious picture in gorgeous colouring.
+
+The walls were lined from floor to roof with books and books: most of
+them in ancient bindings, but some in strange new fashions which I had
+never seen, and which, were I to make the attempt, I could ill describe.
+All around the walls, in front of the books, ran galleries in rows,
+communicating by stairs. These galleries were built of all kinds of
+coloured stones; all sorts of marble and granite, with porphyry, jasper,
+lapis lazuli, agate, and various others, were ranged in wonderful melody
+of successive colours. Although the material, then, of which these
+galleries and stairs were built, rendered necessary a certain degree
+of massiveness in the construction, yet such was the size of the place,
+that they seemed to run along the walls like cords.
+
+Over some parts of the library, descended curtains of silk of various
+dyes, none of which I ever saw lifted while I was there; and I felt
+somehow that it would be presumptuous in me to venture to look within
+them. But the use of the other books seemed free; and day after day I
+came to the library, threw myself on one of the many sumptuous eastern
+carpets, which lay here and there on the floor, and read, and read,
+until weary; if that can be designated as weariness, which was rather
+the faintness of rapturous delight; or until, sometimes, the failing of
+the light invited me to go abroad, in the hope that a cool gentle breeze
+might have arisen to bathe, with an airy invigorating bath, the limbs
+which the glow of the burning spirit within had withered no less than
+the glow of the blazing sun without.
+
+One peculiarity of these books, or at least most of those I looked into,
+I must make a somewhat vain attempt to describe.
+
+If, for instance, it was a book of metaphysics I opened, I had scarcely
+read two pages before I seemed to myself to be pondering over discovered
+truth, and constructing the intellectual machine whereby to communicate
+the discovery to my fellow men. With some books, however, of this
+nature, it seemed rather as if the process was removed yet a great way
+further back; and I was trying to find the root of a manifestation,
+the spiritual truth whence a material vision sprang; or to combine
+two propositions, both apparently true, either at once or in different
+remembered moods, and to find the point in which their invisibly
+converging lines would unite in one, revealing a truth higher than
+either and differing from both; though so far from being opposed to
+either, that it was that whence each derived its life and power. Or if
+the book was one of travels, I found myself the traveller. New
+lands, fresh experiences, novel customs, rose around me. I walked, I
+discovered, I fought, I suffered, I rejoiced in my success. Was it a
+history? I was the chief actor therein. I suffered my own blame; I was
+glad in my own praise. With a fiction it was the same. Mine was the
+whole story. For I took the place of the character who was most like
+myself, and his story was mine; until, grown weary with the life of
+years condensed in an hour, or arrived at my deathbed, or the end of the
+volume, I would awake, with a sudden bewilderment, to the consciousness
+of my present life, recognising the walls and roof around me, and
+finding I joyed or sorrowed only in a book. If the book was a poem, the
+words disappeared, or took the subordinate position of an accompaniment
+to the succession of forms and images that rose and vanished with a
+soundless rhythm, and a hidden rime.
+
+In one, with a mystical title, which I cannot recall, I read of a
+world that is not like ours. The wondrous account, in such a feeble,
+fragmentary way as is possible to me, I would willingly impart. Whether
+or not it was all a poem, I cannot tell; but, from the impulse I felt,
+when I first contemplated writing it, to break into rime, to which
+impulse I shall give way if it comes upon me again, I think it must have
+been, partly at least, in verse.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+            "Chained is the Spring.  The night-wind bold
+              Blows over the hard earth;
+             Time is not more confused and cold,
+              Nor keeps more wintry mirth.
+
+            "Yet blow, and roll the world about;
+               Blow, Time--blow, winter's Wind!
+             Through chinks of Time, heaven peepeth out,
+               And Spring the frost behind."
+                                        G. E. M.
+
+They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men,
+are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the
+heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an
+external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be
+without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of
+all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of
+the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already
+imbodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the
+consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped
+life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other
+connexions with the worlds around us, than those of science and
+poetry. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a
+self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things
+of a man's soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as
+well. They are portions of the living house wherein he abides.
+
+             Through the realms of the monarch Sun
+         Creeps a world, whose course had begun,
+         On a weary path with a weary pace,
+         Before the Earth sprang forth on her race:
+         But many a time the Earth had sped
+         Around the path she still must tread,
+         Ere the elder planet, on leaden wing,
+         Once circled the court of the planet's king.
+
+            There, in that lonely and distant star,
+         The seasons are not as our seasons are;
+         But many a year hath Autumn to dress
+         The trees in their matron loveliness;
+         As long hath old Winter in triumph to go
+         O'er beauties dead in his vaults below;
+         And many a year the Spring doth wear
+         Combing the icicles from her hair;
+         And Summer, dear Summer, hath years of June,
+         With large white clouds, and cool showers at noon:
+         And a beauty that grows to a weight like grief,
+         Till a burst of tears is the heart's relief.
+
+            Children, born when Winter is king,
+         May never rejoice in the hoping Spring;
+         Though their own heart-buds are bursting with joy,
+         And the child hath grown to the girl or boy;
+         But may die with cold and icy hours
+         Watching them ever in place of flowers.
+         And some who awake from their primal sleep,
+         When the sighs of Summer through forests creep,
+         Live, and love, and are loved again;
+         Seek for pleasure, and find its pain;
+         Sink to their last, their forsaken sleeping,
+         With the same sweet odours around them creeping.
+
+Now the children, there, are not born as the children are born in worlds
+nearer to the sun. For they arrive no one knows how. A maiden, walking
+alone, hears a cry: for even there a cry is the first utterance; and
+searching about, she findeth, under an overhanging rock, or within a
+clump of bushes, or, it may be, betwixt gray stones on the side of a
+hill, or in any other sheltered and unexpected spot, a little child.
+This she taketh tenderly, and beareth home with joy, calling out,
+"Mother, mother"--if so be that her mother lives--"I have got a baby--I
+have found a child!" All the household gathers round to see;--"WHERE IS
+IT? WHAT IS IT LIKE? WHERE DID YOU FIND IT?" and such-like questions,
+abounding. And thereupon she relates the whole story of the discovery;
+for by the circumstances, such as season of the year, time of the day,
+condition of the air, and such like, and, especially, the peculiar and
+never-repeated aspect of the heavens and earth at the time, and the
+nature of the place of shelter wherein it is found, is determined, or at
+least indicated, the nature of the child thus discovered. Therefore,
+at certain seasons, and in certain states of the weather, according, in
+part, to their own fancy, the young women go out to look for children.
+They generally avoid seeking them, though they cannot help sometimes
+finding them, in places and with circumstances uncongenial to their
+peculiar likings. But no sooner is a child found, than its claim for
+protection and nurture obliterates all feeling of choice in the matter.
+Chiefly, however, in the season of summer, which lasts so long, coming
+as it does after such long intervals; and mostly in the warm evenings,
+about the middle of twilight; and principally in the woods and along
+the river banks, do the maidens go looking for children just as children
+look for flowers. And ever as the child grows, yea, more and more as he
+advances in years, will his face indicate to those who understand the
+spirit of Nature, and her utterances in the face of the world, the
+nature of the place of his birth, and the other circumstances thereof;
+whether a clear morning sun guided his mother to the nook whence issued
+the boy's low cry; or at eve the lonely maiden (for the same woman never
+finds a second, at least while the first lives) discovers the girl by
+the glimmer of her white skin, lying in a nest like that of the lark,
+amid long encircling grasses, and the upward-gazing eyes of the lowly
+daisies; whether the storm bowed the forest trees around, or the still
+frost fixed in silence the else flowing and babbling stream.
+
+After they grow up, the men and women are but little together. There is
+this peculiar difference between them, which likewise distinguishes the
+women from those of the earth. The men alone have arms; the women
+have only wings. Resplendent wings are they, wherein they can shroud
+themselves from head to foot in a panoply of glistering glory. By these
+wings alone, it may frequently be judged in what seasons, and under what
+aspects, they were born. From those that came in winter, go great white
+wings, white as snow; the edge of every feather shining like the sheen
+of silver, so that they flash and glitter like frost in the sun. But
+underneath, they are tinged with a faint pink or rose-colour. Those born
+in spring have wings of a brilliant green, green as grass; and
+towards the edges the feathers are enamelled like the surface of the
+grass-blades. These again are white within. Those that are born in
+summer have wings of a deep rose-colour, lined with pale gold. And those
+born in autumn have purple wings, with a rich brown on the inside. But
+these colours are modified and altered in all varieties, corresponding
+to the mood of the day and hour, as well as the season of the year; and
+sometimes I found the various colours so intermingled, that I could not
+determine even the season, though doubtless the hieroglyphic could be
+deciphered by more experienced eyes. One splendour, in particular, I
+remember--wings of deep carmine, with an inner down of warm gray, around
+a form of brilliant whiteness.
+
+She had been found as the sun went down through a low sea-fog, casting
+crimson along a broad sea-path into a little cave on the shore, where a
+bathing maiden saw her lying.
+
+But though I speak of sun and fog, and sea and shore, the world there
+is in some respects very different from the earth whereon men live.
+For instance, the waters reflect no forms. To the unaccustomed eye they
+appear, if undisturbed, like the surface of a dark metal, only that
+the latter would reflect indistinctly, whereas they reflect not at all,
+except light which falls immediately upon them. This has a great effect
+in causing the landscapes to differ from those on the earth. On
+the stillest evening, no tall ship on the sea sends a long wavering
+reflection almost to the feet of him on shore; the face of no maiden
+brightens at its own beauty in a still forest-well. The sun and moon
+alone make a glitter on the surface. The sea is like a sea of death,
+ready to ingulf and never to reveal: a visible shadow of oblivion. Yet
+the women sport in its waters like gorgeous sea-birds. The men more
+rarely enter them. But, on the contrary, the sky reflects everything
+beneath it, as if it were built of water like ours. Of course, from
+its concavity there is some distortion of the reflected objects; yet
+wondrous combinations of form are often to be seen in the overhanging
+depth. And then it is not shaped so much like a round dome as the sky of
+the earth, but, more of an egg-shape, rises to a great towering height
+in the middle, appearing far more lofty than the other. When the stars
+come out at night, it shows a mighty cupola, "fretted with golden
+fires," wherein there is room for all tempests to rush and rave.
+
+One evening in early summer, I stood with a group of men and women on a
+steep rock that overhung the sea. They were all questioning me about my
+world and the ways thereof. In making reply to one of their questions,
+I was compelled to say that children are not born in the Earth as with
+them. Upon this I was assailed with a whole battery of inquiries, which
+at first I tried to avoid; but, at last, I was compelled, in the vaguest
+manner I could invent, to make some approach to the subject in question.
+Immediately a dim notion of what I meant, seemed to dawn in the minds
+of most of the women. Some of them folded their great wings all around
+them, as they generally do when in the least offended, and stood erect
+and motionless. One spread out her rosy pinions, and flashed from the
+promontory into the gulf at its foot. A great light shone in the eyes of
+one maiden, who turned and walked slowly away, with her purple and white
+wings half dispread behind her. She was found, the next morning, dead
+beneath a withered tree on a bare hill-side, some miles inland. They
+buried her where she lay, as is their custom; for, before they die,
+they instinctively search for a spot like the place of their birth, and
+having found one that satisfies them, they lie down, fold their wings
+around them, if they be women, or cross their arms over their breasts,
+if they are men, just as if they were going to sleep; and so sleep
+indeed. The sign or cause of coming death is an indescribable longing
+for something, they know not what, which seizes them, and drives them
+into solitude, consuming them within, till the body fails. When a youth
+and a maiden look too deep into each other's eyes, this longing seizes
+and possesses them; but instead of drawing nearer to each other, they
+wander away, each alone, into solitary places, and die of their desire.
+But it seems to me, that thereafter they are born babes upon our earth:
+where, if, when grown, they find each other, it goes well with them;
+if not, it will seem to go ill. But of this I know nothing. When I told
+them that the women on the Earth had not wings like them, but arms, they
+stared, and said how bold and masculine they must look; not knowing that
+their wings, glorious as they are, are but undeveloped arms.
+
+But see the power of this book, that, while recounting what I can recall
+of its contents, I write as if myself had visited the far-off planet,
+learned its ways and appearances, and conversed with its men and women.
+And so, while writing, it seemed to me that I had.
+
+The book goes on with the story of a maiden, who, born at the close of
+autumn, and living in a long, to her endless winter, set out at last
+to find the regions of spring; for, as in our earth, the seasons are
+divided over the globe. It begins something like this:
+
+            She watched them dying for many a day,
+            Dropping from off the old trees away,
+            One by one; or else in a shower
+            Crowding over the withered flower
+            For as if they had done some grievous wrong,
+            The sun, that had nursed them and loved them so long,
+            Grew weary of loving, and, turning back,
+            Hastened away on his southern track;
+            And helplessly hung each shrivelled leaf,
+            Faded away with an idle grief.
+            And the gusts of wind, sad Autumn's sighs,
+            Mournfully swept through their families;
+            Casting away with a helpless moan
+            All that he yet might call his own,
+            As the child, when his bird is gone for ever,
+            Flingeth the cage on the wandering river.
+            And the giant trees, as bare as Death,
+            Slowly bowed to the great Wind's breath;
+            And groaned with trying to keep from groaning
+            Amidst the young trees bending and moaning.
+            And the ancient planet's mighty sea
+            Was heaving and falling most restlessly,
+            And the tops of the waves were broken and white,
+            Tossing about to ease their might;
+            And the river was striving to reach the main,
+            And the ripple was hurrying back again.
+            Nature lived in sadness now;
+            Sadness lived on the maiden's brow,
+            As she watched, with a fixed, half-conscious eye,
+            One lonely leaf that trembled on high,
+            Till it dropped at last from the desolate bough--
+            Sorrow, oh, sorrow! 'tis winter now.
+            And her tears gushed forth, though it was but a leaf,
+            For little will loose the swollen fountain of grief:
+            When up to the lip the water goes,
+            It needs but a drop, and it overflows.
+
+            Oh! many and many a dreary year
+            Must pass away ere the buds appear:
+            Many a night of darksome sorrow
+            Yield to the light of a joyless morrow,
+            Ere birds again, on the clothed trees,
+            Shall fill the branches with melodies.
+            She will dream of meadows with wakeful streams;
+            Of wavy grass in the sunny beams;
+            Of hidden wells that soundless spring,
+            Hoarding their joy as a holy thing;
+            Of founts that tell it all day long
+            To the listening woods, with exultant song;
+            She will dream of evenings that die into nights,
+            Where each sense is filled with its own delights,
+            And the soul is still as the vaulted sky,
+            Lulled with an inner harmony;
+
+            And the flowers give out to the dewy night,
+            Changed into perfume, the gathered light;
+            And the darkness sinks upon all their host,
+            Till the sun sail up on the eastern coast--
+            She will wake and see the branches bare,
+            Weaving a net in the frozen air.
+
+
+
+The story goes on to tell how, at last, weary with wintriness, she
+travelled towards the southern regions of her globe, to meet the spring
+on its slow way northwards; and how, after many sad adventures, many
+disappointed hopes, and many tears, bitter and fruitless, she found
+at last, one stormy afternoon, in a leafless forest, a single snowdrop
+growing betwixt the borders of the winter and spring. She lay down
+beside it and died. I almost believe that a child, pale and peaceful as
+a snowdrop, was born in the Earth within a fixed season from that stormy
+afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+             "I saw a ship sailing upon the sea
+              Deeply laden as ship could be;
+              But not so deep as in love I am
+              For I care not whether I sink or swim."
+                                    Old Ballad.
+
+            "But Love is such a Mystery
+                 I cannot find it out:
+              For when I think I'm best resolv'd,
+                 I then am in most doubt."
+                               SIR JOHN SUCKLING.
+
+One story I will try to reproduce. But, alas! it is like trying to
+reconstruct a forest out of broken branches and withered leaves. In the
+fairy book, everything was just as it should be, though whether in words
+or something else, I cannot tell. It glowed and flashed the thoughts
+upon the soul, with such a power that the medium disappeared from the
+consciousness, and it was occupied only with the things themselves.
+My representation of it must resemble a translation from a rich and
+powerful language, capable of embodying the thoughts of a splendidly
+developed people, into the meagre and half-articulate speech of a savage
+tribe. Of course, while I read it, I was Cosmo, and his history
+was mine. Yet, all the time, I seemed to have a kind of double
+consciousness, and the story a double meaning. Sometimes it seemed
+only to represent a simple story of ordinary life, perhaps almost of
+universal life; wherein two souls, loving each other and longing to come
+nearer, do, after all, but behold each other as in a glass darkly.
+
+As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the
+solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the
+lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through
+the earth's atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men, and
+sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and
+effect, when between the two no connecting links can be traced.
+
+Cosmo von Wehrstahl was a student at the University of Prague. Though
+of a noble family, he was poor, and prided himself upon the independence
+that poverty gives; for what will not a man pride himself upon, when he
+cannot get rid of it? A favourite with his fellow students, he yet had
+no companions; and none of them had ever crossed the threshold of his
+lodging in the top of one of the highest houses in the old town. Indeed,
+the secret of much of that complaisance which recommended him to his
+fellows, was the thought of his unknown retreat, whither in the evening
+he could betake himself and indulge undisturbed in his own studies and
+reveries. These studies, besides those subjects necessary to his course
+at the University, embraced some less commonly known and approved;
+for in a secret drawer lay the works of Albertus Magnus and Cornelius
+Agrippa, along with others less read and more abstruse. As yet, however,
+he had followed these researches only from curiosity, and had turned
+them to no practical purpose.
+
+His lodging consisted of one large low-ceiled room, singularly bare of
+furniture; for besides a couple of wooden chairs, a couch which served
+for dreaming on both by day and night, and a great press of black oak,
+there was very little in the room that could be called furniture.
+
+But curious instruments were heaped in the corners; and in one stood
+a skeleton, half-leaning against the wall, half-supported by a string
+about its neck. One of its hands, all of fingers, rested on the heavy
+pommel of a great sword that stood beside it.
+
+Various weapons were scattered about over the floor. The walls were
+utterly bare of adornment; for the few strange things, such as a large
+dried bat with wings dispread, the skin of a porcupine, and a stuffed
+sea-mouse, could hardly be reckoned as such. But although his fancy
+delighted in vagaries like these, he indulged his imagination with far
+different fare. His mind had never yet been filled with an absorbing
+passion; but it lay like a still twilight open to any wind, whether the
+low breath that wafts but odours, or the storm that bows the great trees
+till they strain and creak. He saw everything as through a rose-coloured
+glass. When he looked from his window on the street below, not a maiden
+passed but she moved as in a story, and drew his thoughts after her till
+she disappeared in the vista. When he walked in the streets, he always
+felt as if reading a tale, into which he sought to weave every face of
+interest that went by; and every sweet voice swept his soul as with the
+wing of a passing angel. He was in fact a poet without words; the more
+absorbed and endangered, that the springing-waters were dammed back
+into his soul, where, finding no utterance, they grew, and swelled, and
+undermined. He used to lie on his hard couch, and read a tale or a poem,
+till the book dropped from his hand; but he dreamed on, he knew not
+whether awake or asleep, until the opposite roof grew upon his sense,
+and turned golden in the sunrise. Then he arose too; and the impulses of
+vigorous youth kept him ever active, either in study or in sport, until
+again the close of the day left him free; and the world of night, which
+had lain drowned in the cataract of the day, rose up in his soul, with
+all its stars, and dim-seen phantom shapes. But this could hardly last
+long. Some one form must sooner or later step within the charmed circle,
+enter the house of life, and compel the bewildered magician to kneel and
+worship.
+
+One afternoon, towards dusk, he was wandering dreamily in one of the
+principal streets, when a fellow student roused him by a slap on the
+shoulder, and asked him to accompany him into a little back alley to
+look at some old armour which he had taken a fancy to possess. Cosmo was
+considered an authority in every matter pertaining to arms, ancient or
+modern. In the use of weapons, none of the students could come near him;
+and his practical acquaintance with some had principally contributed
+to establish his authority in reference to all. He accompanied him
+willingly.
+
+They entered a narrow alley, and thence a dirty little court, where
+a low arched door admitted them into a heterogeneous assemblage of
+everything musty, and dusty, and old, that could well be imagined.
+His verdict on the armour was satisfactory, and his companion at once
+concluded the purchase. As they were leaving the place, Cosmo's eye was
+attracted by an old mirror of an elliptical shape, which leaned against
+the wall, covered with dust. Around it was some curious carving, which
+he could see but very indistinctly by the glimmering light which
+the owner of the shop carried in his hand. It was this carving that
+attracted his attention; at least so it appeared to him. He left the
+place, however, with his friend, taking no further notice of it. They
+walked together to the main street, where they parted and took opposite
+directions.
+
+No sooner was Cosmo left alone, than the thought of the curious old
+mirror returned to him. A strong desire to see it more plainly arose
+within him, and he directed his steps once more towards the shop. The
+owner opened the door when he knocked, as if he had expected him. He
+was a little, old, withered man, with a hooked nose, and burning eyes
+constantly in a slow restless motion, and looking here and there as if
+after something that eluded them. Pretending to examine several other
+articles, Cosmo at last approached the mirror, and requested to have it
+taken down.
+
+"Take it down yourself, master; I cannot reach it," said the old man.
+
+Cosmo took it down carefully, when he saw that the carving was indeed
+delicate and costly, being both of admirable design and execution;
+containing withal many devices which seemed to embody some meaning
+to which he had no clue. This, naturally, in one of his tastes and
+temperament, increased the interest he felt in the old mirror; so much,
+indeed, that he now longed to possess it, in order to study its frame at
+his leisure. He pretended, however, to want it only for use; and saying
+he feared the plate could be of little service, as it was rather old, he
+brushed away a little of the dust from its face, expecting to see a dull
+reflection within. His surprise was great when he found the reflection
+brilliant, revealing a glass not only uninjured by age, but wondrously
+clear and perfect (should the whole correspond to this part) even for
+one newly from the hands of the maker. He asked carelessly what the
+owner wanted for the thing. The old man replied by mentioning a sum of
+money far beyond the reach of poor Cosmo, who proceeded to replace the
+mirror where it had stood before.
+
+"You think the price too high?" said the old man.
+
+"I do not know that it is too much for you to ask," replied Cosmo; "but
+it is far too much for me to give."
+
+The old man held up his light towards Cosmo's face. "I like your look,"
+said he.
+
+Cosmo could not return the compliment. In fact, now he looked closely
+at him for the first time, he felt a kind of repugnance to him, mingled
+with a strange feeling of doubt whether a man or a woman stood before
+him.
+
+"What is your name?" he continued.
+
+"Cosmo von Wehrstahl."
+
+"Ah, ah! I thought as much. I see your father in you. I knew your father
+very well, young sir. I dare say in some odd corners of my house, you
+might find some old things with his crest and cipher upon them still.
+Well, I like you: you shall have the mirror at the fourth part of what I
+asked for it; but upon one condition."
+
+"What is that?" said Cosmo; for, although the price was still a great
+deal for him to give, he could just manage it; and the desire to possess
+the mirror had increased to an altogether unaccountable degree, since it
+had seemed beyond his reach.
+
+"That if you should ever want to get rid of it again, you will let me
+have the first offer."
+
+"Certainly," replied Cosmo, with a smile; adding, "a moderate condition
+indeed."
+
+"On your honour?" insisted the seller.
+
+"On my honour," said the buyer; and the bargain was concluded.
+
+"I will carry it home for you," said the old man, as Cosmo took it in
+his hands.
+
+"No, no; I will carry it myself," said he; for he had a peculiar dislike
+to revealing his residence to any one, and more especially to this
+person, to whom he felt every moment a greater antipathy. "Just as you
+please," said the old creature, and muttered to himself as he held his
+light at the door to show him out of the court: "Sold for the sixth
+time! I wonder what will be the upshot of it this time. I should think
+my lady had enough of it by now!"
+
+Cosmo carried his prize carefully home. But all the way he had an
+uncomfortable feeling that he was watched and dogged. Repeatedly he
+looked about, but saw nothing to justify his suspicions. Indeed, the
+streets were too crowded and too ill lighted to expose very readily
+a careful spy, if such there should be at his heels. He reached his
+lodging in safety, and leaned his purchase against the wall, rather
+relieved, strong as he was, to be rid of its weight; then, lighting his
+pipe, threw himself on the couch, and was soon lapt in the folds of one
+of his haunting dreams.
+
+He returned home earlier than usual the next day, and fixed the mirror
+to the wall, over the hearth, at one end of his long room.
+
+He then carefully wiped away the dust from its face, and, clear as the
+water of a sunny spring, the mirror shone out from beneath the envious
+covering. But his interest was chiefly occupied with the curious carving
+of the frame. This he cleaned as well as he could with a brush; and then
+he proceeded to a minute examination of its various parts, in the hope
+of discovering some index to the intention of the carver. In this,
+however, he was unsuccessful; and, at length, pausing with some
+weariness and disappointment, he gazed vacantly for a few moments into
+the depth of the reflected room. But ere long he said, half aloud: "What
+a strange thing a mirror is! and what a wondrous affinity exists between
+it and a man's imagination! For this room of mine, as I behold it in
+the glass, is the same, and yet not the same. It is not the mere
+representation of the room I live in, but it looks just as if I were
+reading about it in a story I like. All its commonness has disappeared.
+The mirror has lifted it out of the region of fact into the realm of
+art; and the very representing of it to me has clothed with interest
+that which was otherwise hard and bare; just as one sees with delight
+upon the stage the representation of a character from which one would
+escape in life as from something unendurably wearisome. But is it not
+rather that art rescues nature from the weary and sated regards of our
+senses, and the degrading injustice of our anxious everyday life, and,
+appealing to the imagination, which dwells apart, reveals Nature in some
+degree as she really is, and as she represents herself to the eye of the
+child, whose every-day life, fearless and unambitious, meets the true
+import of the wonder-teeming world around him, and rejoices therein
+without questioning? That skeleton, now--I almost fear it, standing
+there so still, with eyes only for the unseen, like a watch-tower
+looking across all the waste of this busy world into the quiet regions
+of rest beyond. And yet I know every bone and every joint in it as well
+as my own fist. And that old battle-axe looks as if any moment it might
+be caught up by a mailed hand, and, borne forth by the mighty arm, go
+crashing through casque, and skull, and brain, invading the Unknown with
+yet another bewildered ghost. I should like to live in THAT room if I
+could only get into it."
+
+Scarcely had the half-moulded words floated from him, as he stood gazing
+into the mirror, when, striking him as with a flash of amazement that
+fixed him in his posture, noiseless and unannounced, glided suddenly
+through the door into the reflected room, with stately motion, yet
+reluctant and faltering step, the graceful form of a woman, clothed all
+in white. Her back only was visible as she walked slowly up to the
+couch in the further end of the room, on which she laid herself
+wearily, turning towards him a face of unutterable loveliness, in which
+suffering, and dislike, and a sense of compulsion, strangely mingled
+with the beauty. He stood without the power of motion for some moments,
+with his eyes irrecoverably fixed upon her; and even after he was
+conscious of the ability to move, he could not summon up courage to
+turn and look on her, face to face, in the veritable chamber in which
+he stood. At length, with a sudden effort, in which the exercise of the
+will was so pure, that it seemed involuntary, he turned his face to the
+couch. It was vacant. In bewilderment, mingled with terror, he turned
+again to the mirror: there, on the reflected couch, lay the exquisite
+lady-form. She lay with closed eyes, whence two large tears were just
+welling from beneath the veiling lids; still as death, save for the
+convulsive motion of her bosom.
+
+Cosmo himself could not have described what he felt. His emotions were
+of a kind that destroyed consciousness, and could never be clearly
+recalled. He could not help standing yet by the mirror, and keeping his
+eyes fixed on the lady, though he was painfully aware of his rudeness,
+and feared every moment that she would open hers, and meet his fixed
+regard. But he was, ere long, a little relieved; for, after a while, her
+eyelids slowly rose, and her eyes remained uncovered, but unemployed for
+a time; and when, at length, they began to wander about the room, as if
+languidly seeking to make some acquaintance with her environment, they
+were never directed towards him: it seemed nothing but what was in the
+mirror could affect her vision; and, therefore, if she saw him at all,
+it could only be his back, which, of necessity, was turned towards her
+in the glass. The two figures in the mirror could not meet face to face,
+except he turned and looked at her, present in his room; and, as she was
+not there, he concluded that if he were to turn towards the part in his
+room corresponding to that in which she lay, his reflection would either
+be invisible to her altogether, or at least it must appear to her to
+gaze vacantly towards her, and no meeting of the eyes would produce
+the impression of spiritual proximity. By-and-by her eyes fell upon the
+skeleton, and he saw her shudder and close them. She did not open them
+again, but signs of repugnance continued evident on her countenance.
+Cosmo would have removed the obnoxious thing at once, but he feared to
+discompose her yet more by the assertion of his presence which the act
+would involve. So he stood and watched her. The eyelids yet shrouded
+the eyes, as a costly case the jewels within; the troubled expression
+gradually faded from the countenance, leaving only a faint sorrow
+behind; the features settled into an unchanging expression of rest; and
+by these signs, and the slow regular motion of her breathing, Cosmo knew
+that she slept. He could now gaze on her without embarrassment. He saw
+that her figure, dressed in the simplest robe of white, was worthy of
+her face; and so harmonious, that either the delicately moulded foot, or
+any finger of the equally delicate hand, was an index to the whole. As
+she lay, her whole form manifested the relaxation of perfect repose. He
+gazed till he was weary, and at last seated himself near the new-found
+shrine, and mechanically took up a book, like one who watches by a
+sick-bed. But his eyes gathered no thoughts from the page before him.
+His intellect had been stunned by the bold contradiction, to its face,
+of all its experience, and now lay passive, without assertion, or
+speculation, or even conscious astonishment; while his imagination sent
+one wild dream of blessedness after another coursing through his soul.
+How long he sat he knew not; but at length he roused himself, rose, and,
+trembling in every portion of his frame, looked again into the mirror.
+She was gone. The mirror reflected faithfully what his room presented,
+and nothing more. It stood there like a golden setting whence the
+central jewel has been stolen away--like a night-sky without the glory
+of its stars. She had carried with her all the strangeness of the
+reflected room. It had sunk to the level of the one without.
+
+But when the first pangs of his disappointment had passed, Cosmo began
+to comfort himself with the hope that she might return, perhaps the next
+evening, at the same hour. Resolving that if she did, she should not
+at least be scared by the hateful skeleton, he removed that and several
+other articles of questionable appearance into a recess by the side of
+the hearth, whence they could not possibly cast any reflection into the
+mirror; and having made his poor room as tidy as he could, sought the
+solace of the open sky and of a night wind that had begun to blow, for
+he could not rest where he was. When he returned, somewhat composed, he
+could hardly prevail with himself to lie down on his bed; for he could
+not help feeling as if she had lain upon it; and for him to lie there
+now would be something like sacrilege. However, weariness prevailed; and
+laying himself on the couch, dressed as he was, he slept till day.
+
+With a beating heart, beating till he could hardly breathe, he stood
+in dumb hope before the mirror, on the following evening. Again the
+reflected room shone as through a purple vapour in the gathering
+twilight. Everything seemed waiting like himself for a coming splendour
+to glorify its poor earthliness with the presence of a heavenly joy. And
+just as the room vibrated with the strokes of the neighbouring church
+bell, announcing the hour of six, in glided the pale beauty, and again
+laid herself on the couch. Poor Cosmo nearly lost his senses with
+delight. She was there once more! Her eyes sought the corner where the
+skeleton had stood, and a faint gleam of satisfaction crossed her face,
+apparently at seeing it empty. She looked suffering still, but there was
+less of discomfort expressed in her countenance than there had been the
+night before. She took more notice of the things about her, and seemed
+to gaze with some curiosity on the strange apparatus standing here and
+there in her room. At length, however, drowsiness seemed to overtake
+her, and again she fell asleep. Resolved not to lose sight of her this
+time, Cosmo watched the sleeping form. Her slumber was so deep and
+absorbing that a fascinating repose seemed to pass contagiously from her
+to him as he gazed upon her; and he started as if from a dream, when
+the lady moved, and, without opening her eyes, rose, and passed from the
+room with the gait of a somnambulist.
+
+Cosmo was now in a state of extravagant delight. Most men have a secret
+treasure somewhere. The miser has his golden hoard; the virtuoso his pet
+ring; the student his rare book; the poet his favourite haunt; the lover
+his secret drawer; but Cosmo had a mirror with a lovely lady in it. And
+now that he knew by the skeleton, that she was affected by the things
+around her, he had a new object in life: he would turn the bare chamber
+in the mirror into a room such as no lady need disdain to call her own.
+This he could effect only by furnishing and adorning his. And Cosmo was
+poor. Yet he possessed accomplishments that could be turned to account;
+although, hitherto, he had preferred living on his slender allowance, to
+increasing his means by what his pride considered unworthy of his rank.
+He was the best swordsman in the University; and now he offered to give
+lessons in fencing and similar exercises, to such as chose to pay
+him well for the trouble. His proposal was heard with surprise by the
+students; but it was eagerly accepted by many; and soon his instructions
+were not confined to the richer students, but were anxiously sought by
+many of the young nobility of Prague and its neighbourhood. So that very
+soon he had a good deal of money at his command. The first thing he did
+was to remove his apparatus and oddities into a closet in the room.
+Then he placed his bed and a few other necessaries on each side of the
+hearth, and parted them from the rest of the room by two screens of
+Indian fabric. Then he put an elegant couch for the lady to lie upon, in
+the corner where his bed had formerly stood; and, by degrees, every
+day adding some article of luxury, converted it, at length, into a rich
+boudoir.
+
+Every night, about the same time, the lady entered. The first time she
+saw the new couch, she started with a half-smile; then her face grew
+very sad, the tears came to her eyes, and she laid herself upon the
+couch, and pressed her face into the silken cushions, as if to hide from
+everything. She took notice of each addition and each change as the work
+proceeded; and a look of acknowledgment, as if she knew that some
+one was ministering to her, and was grateful for it, mingled with the
+constant look of suffering. At length, after she had lain down as usual
+one evening, her eyes fell upon some paintings with which Cosmo had just
+finished adorning the walls. She rose, and to his great delight, walked
+across the room, and proceeded to examine them carefully, testifying
+much pleasure in her looks as she did so. But again the sorrowful,
+tearful expression returned, and again she buried her face in the
+pillows of her couch. Gradually, however, her countenance had grown more
+composed; much of the suffering manifest on her first appearance had
+vanished, and a kind of quiet, hopeful expression had taken its place;
+which, however, frequently gave way to an anxious, troubled look,
+mingled with something of sympathetic pity.
+
+Meantime, how fared Cosmo? As might be expected in one of his
+temperament, his interest had blossomed into love, and his love--shall
+I call it RIPENED, or--WITHERED into passion. But, alas! he loved a
+shadow. He could not come near her, could not speak to her, could not
+hear a sound from those sweet lips, to which his longing eyes would
+cling like bees to their honey-founts. Ever and anon he sang to himself:
+
+            "I shall die for love of the maiden;"
+
+and ever he looked again, and died not, though his heart seemed ready to
+break with intensity of life and longing. And the more he did for her,
+the more he loved her; and he hoped that, although she never appeared
+to see him, yet she was pleased to think that one unknown would give his
+life to her. He tried to comfort himself over his separation from her,
+by thinking that perhaps some day she would see him and make signs to
+him, and that would satisfy him; "for," thought he, "is not this all
+that a loving soul can do to enter into communion with another? Nay,
+how many who love never come nearer than to behold each other as in a
+mirror; seem to know and yet never know the inward life; never enter
+the other soul; and part at last, with but the vaguest notion of the
+universe on the borders of which they have been hovering for years? If
+I could but speak to her, and knew that she heard me, I should be
+satisfied." Once he contemplated painting a picture on the wall, which
+should, of necessity, convey to the lady a thought of himself; but,
+though he had some skill with the pencil, he found his hand tremble so
+much when he began the attempt, that he was forced to give it up. . . .
+. .
+
+        "Who lives, he dies; who dies, he is alive."
+
+ One evening, as he stood gazing on his treasure, he thought he
+saw a faint expression of self-consciousness on her countenance, as if
+she surmised that passionate eyes were fixed upon her. This grew; till
+at last the red blood rose over her neck, and cheek, and brow. Cosmo's
+longing to approach her became almost delirious. This night she was
+dressed in an evening costume, resplendent with diamonds. This could add
+nothing to her beauty, but it presented it in a new aspect; enabled her
+loveliness to make a new manifestation of itself in a new embodiment.
+For essential beauty is infinite; and, as the soul of Nature needs an
+endless succession of varied forms to embody her loveliness, countless
+faces of beauty springing forth, not any two the same, at any one of
+her heart-throbs; so the individual form needs an infinite change of its
+environments, to enable it to uncover all the phases of its loveliness.
+Diamonds glittered from amidst her hair, half hidden in its luxuriance,
+like stars through dark rain-clouds; and the bracelets on her white arms
+flashed all the colours of a rainbow of lightnings, as she lifted her
+snowy hands to cover her burning face. But her beauty shone down all its
+adornment. "If I might have but one of her feet to kiss," thought Cosmo,
+"I should be content." Alas! he deceived himself, for passion is never
+content. Nor did he know that there are TWO ways out of her enchanted
+house. But, suddenly, as if the pang had been driven into his heart
+from without, revealing itself first in pain, and afterwards in definite
+form, the thought darted into his mind, "She has a lover somewhere.
+Remembered words of his bring the colour on her face now. I am nowhere
+to her. She lives in another world all day, and all night, after she
+leaves me. Why does she come and make me love her, till I, a strong man,
+am too faint to look upon her more?" He looked again, and her face was
+pale as a lily. A sorrowful compassion seemed to rebuke the glitter of
+the restless jewels, and the slow tears rose in her eyes. She left her
+room sooner this evening than was her wont. Cosmo remained alone, with a
+feeling as if his bosom had been suddenly left empty and hollow, and the
+weight of the whole world was crushing in its walls. The next evening,
+for the first time since she began to come, she came not.
+
+And now Cosmo was in wretched plight. Since the thought of a rival
+had occurred to him, he could not rest for a moment. More than ever he
+longed to see the lady face to face. He persuaded himself that if he but
+knew the worst he would be satisfied; for then he could abandon Prague,
+and find that relief in constant motion, which is the hope of all active
+minds when invaded by distress. Meantime he waited with unspeakable
+anxiety for the next night, hoping she would return: but she did not
+appear. And now he fell really ill. Rallied by his fellow students on
+his wretched looks, he ceased to attend the lectures. His engagements
+were neglected. He cared for nothing. The sky, with the great sun in it,
+was to him a heartless, burning desert. The men and women in the streets
+were mere puppets, without motives in themselves, or interest to him. He
+saw them all as on the ever-changing field of a camera obscura. She--she
+alone and altogether--was his universe, his well of life, his incarnate
+good. For six evenings she came not. Let his absorbing passion, and
+the slow fever that was consuming his brain, be his excuse for the
+resolution which he had taken and begun to execute, before that time had
+expired.
+
+Reasoning with himself, that it must be by some enchantment connected
+with the mirror, that the form of the lady was to be seen in it, he
+determined to attempt to turn to account what he had hitherto studied
+principally from curiosity. "For," said he to himself, "if a spell can
+force her presence in that glass (and she came unwillingly at first),
+may not a stronger spell, such as I know, especially with the aid of
+her half-presence in the mirror, if ever she appears again, compel
+her living form to come to me here? If I do her wrong, let love be
+my excuse. I want only to know my doom from her own lips." He never
+doubted, all the time, that she was a real earthly woman; or, rather,
+that there was a woman, who, somehow or other, threw this reflection of
+her form into the magic mirror.
+
+He opened his secret drawer, took out his books of magic, lighted his
+lamp, and read and made notes from midnight till three in the morning,
+for three successive nights. Then he replaced his books; and the next
+night went out in quest of the materials necessary for the conjuration.
+These were not easy to find; for, in love-charms and all incantations of
+this nature, ingredients are employed scarcely fit to be mentioned,
+and for the thought even of which, in connexion with her, he could only
+excuse himself on the score of his bitter need. At length he succeeded
+in procuring all he required; and on the seventh evening from that on
+which she had last appeared, he found himself prepared for the exercise
+of unlawful and tyrannical power.
+
+He cleared the centre of the room; stooped and drew a circle of red on
+the floor, around the spot where he stood; wrote in the four quarters
+mystical signs, and numbers which were all powers of seven or nine;
+examined the whole ring carefully, to see that no smallest break had
+occurred in the circumference; and then rose from his bending posture.
+As he rose, the church clock struck seven; and, just as she had appeared
+the first time, reluctant, slow, and stately, glided in the lady. Cosmo
+trembled; and when, turning, she revealed a countenance worn and wan, as
+with sickness or inward trouble, he grew faint, and felt as if he dared
+not proceed. But as he gazed on the face and form, which now possessed
+his whole soul, to the exclusion of all other joys and griefs, the
+longing to speak to her, to know that she heard him, to hear from her
+one word in return, became so unendurable, that he suddenly and hastily
+resumed his preparations. Stepping carefully from the circle, he put
+a small brazier into its centre. He then set fire to its contents of
+charcoal, and while it burned up, opened his window and seated himself,
+waiting, beside it.
+
+It was a sultry evening. The air was full of thunder. A sense of
+luxurious depression filled the brain. The sky seemed to have grown
+heavy, and to compress the air beneath it. A kind of purplish tinge
+pervaded the atmosphere, and through the open window came the scents of
+the distant fields, which all the vapours of the city could not quench.
+Soon the charcoal glowed. Cosmo sprinkled upon it the incense and other
+substances which he had compounded, and, stepping within the circle,
+turned his face from the brazier and towards the mirror. Then, fixing
+his eyes upon the face of the lady, he began with a trembling voice to
+repeat a powerful incantation. He had not gone far, before the lady grew
+pale; and then, like a returning wave, the blood washed all its banks
+with its crimson tide, and she hid her face in her hands. Then he passed
+to a conjuration stronger yet.
+
+The lady rose and walked uneasily to and fro in her room. Another spell;
+and she seemed seeking with her eyes for some object on which they
+wished to rest. At length it seemed as if she suddenly espied him;
+for her eyes fixed themselves full and wide upon his, and she drew
+gradually, and somewhat unwillingly, close to her side of the mirror,
+just as if his eyes had fascinated her. Cosmo had never seen her so near
+before. Now at least, eyes met eyes; but he could not quite understand
+the expression of hers. They were full of tender entreaty, but there was
+something more that he could not interpret. Though his heart seemed to
+labour in his throat, he would allow no delight or agitation to turn him
+from his task. Looking still in her face, he passed on to the mightiest
+charm he knew. Suddenly the lady turned and walked out of the door
+of her reflected chamber. A moment after she entered his room with
+veritable presence; and, forgetting all his precautions, he sprang from
+the charmed circle, and knelt before her. There she stood, the living
+lady of his passionate visions, alone beside him, in a thundery
+twilight, and the glow of a magic fire.
+
+"Why," said the lady, with a trembling voice, "didst thou bring a poor
+maiden through the rainy streets alone?"
+
+"Because I am dying for love of thee; but I only brought thee from the
+mirror there."
+
+"Ah, the mirror!" and she looked up at it, and shuddered. "Alas! I am
+but a slave, while that mirror exists. But do not think it was the power
+of thy spells that drew me; it was thy longing desire to see me, that
+beat at the door of my heart, till I was forced to yield."
+
+"Canst thou love me then?" said Cosmo, in a voice calm as death, but
+almost inarticulate with emotion.
+
+"I do not know," she replied sadly; "that I cannot tell, so long as I am
+bewildered with enchantments. It were indeed a joy too great, to lay my
+head on thy bosom and weep to death; for I think thou lovest me, though
+I do not know;--but----"
+
+Cosmo rose from his knees.
+
+"I love thee as--nay, I know not what--for since I have loved thee,
+there is nothing else."
+
+He seized her hand: she withdrew it.
+
+"No, better not; I am in thy power, and therefore I may not."
+
+She burst into tears, and kneeling before him in her turn, said--
+
+"Cosmo, if thou lovest me, set me free, even from thyself; break the
+mirror."
+
+"And shall I see thyself instead?"
+
+"That I cannot tell, I will not deceive thee; we may never meet again."
+
+A fierce struggle arose in Cosmo's bosom. Now she was in his power. She
+did not dislike him at least; and he could see her when he would. To
+break the mirror would be to destroy his very life to banish out of his
+universe the only glory it possessed. The whole world would be but a
+prison, if he annihilated the one window that looked into the paradise
+of love. Not yet pure in love, he hesitated.
+
+With a wail of sorrow the lady rose to her feet. "Ah! he loves me not;
+he loves me not even as I love him; and alas! I care more for his love
+than even for the freedom I ask."
+
+"I will not wait to be willing," cried Cosmo; and sprang to the corner
+where the great sword stood.
+
+Meantime it had grown very dark; only the embers cast a red glow through
+the room. He seized the sword by the steel scabbard, and stood before
+the mirror; but as he heaved a great blow at it with the heavy pommel,
+the blade slipped half-way out of the scabbard, and the pommel struck
+the wall above the mirror. At that moment, a terrible clap of thunder
+seemed to burst in the very room beside them; and ere Cosmo could repeat
+the blow, he fell senseless on the hearth. When he came to himself, he
+found that the lady and the mirror had both disappeared. He was seized
+with a brain fever, which kept him to his couch for weeks.
+
+When he recovered his reason, he began to think what could have become
+of the mirror. For the lady, he hoped she had found her way back as
+she came; but as the mirror involved her fate with its own, he was more
+immediately anxious about that. He could not think she had carried it
+away. It was much too heavy, even if it had not been too firmly fixed in
+the wall, for her to remove it. Then again, he remembered the thunder;
+which made him believe that it was not the lightning, but some other
+blow that had struck him down. He concluded that, either by supernatural
+agency, he having exposed himself to the vengeance of the demons in
+leaving the circle of safety, or in some other mode, the mirror had
+probably found its way back to its former owner; and, horrible to think
+of, might have been by this time once more disposed of, delivering up
+the lady into the power of another man; who, if he used his power no
+worse than he himself had done, might yet give Cosmo abundant cause to
+curse the selfish indecision which prevented him from shattering the
+mirror at once. Indeed, to think that she whom he loved, and who had
+prayed to him for freedom, should be still at the mercy, in some degree,
+of the possessor of the mirror, and was at least exposed to his constant
+observation, was in itself enough to madden a chary lover.
+
+Anxiety to be well retarded his recovery; but at length he was able to
+creep abroad. He first made his way to the old broker's, pretending to
+be in search of something else. A laughing sneer on the creature's face
+convinced him that he knew all about it; but he could not see it amongst
+his furniture, or get any information out of him as to what had become
+of it. He expressed the utmost surprise at hearing it had been stolen, a
+surprise which Cosmo saw at once to be counterfeited; while, at the same
+time, he fancied that the old wretch was not at all anxious to have it
+mistaken for genuine. Full of distress, which he concealed as well as he
+could, he made many searches, but with no avail. Of course he could
+ask no questions; but he kept his ears awake for any remotest hint that
+might set him in a direction of search. He never went out without a
+short heavy hammer of steel about him, that he might shatter the mirror
+the moment he was made happy by the sight of his lost treasure, if ever
+that blessed moment should arrive. Whether he should see the lady again,
+was now a thought altogether secondary, and postponed to the achievement
+of her freedom. He wandered here and there, like an anxious ghost, pale
+and haggard; gnawed ever at the heart, by the thought of what she might
+be suffering--all from his fault.
+
+One night, he mingled with a crowd that filled the rooms of one of
+the most distinguished mansions in the city; for he accepted every
+invitation, that he might lose no chance, however poor, of obtaining
+some information that might expedite his discovery. Here he wandered
+about, listening to every stray word that he could catch, in the hope of
+a revelation. As he approached some ladies who were talking quietly in a
+corner, one said to another:
+
+"Have you heard of the strange illness of the Princess von Hohenweiss?"
+
+"Yes; she has been ill for more than a year now. It is very sad for so
+fine a creature to have such a terrible malady. She was better for
+some weeks lately, but within the last few days the same attacks have
+returned, apparently accompanied with more suffering than ever. It is
+altogether an inexplicable story."
+
+"Is there a story connected with her illness?"
+
+"I have only heard imperfect reports of it; but it is said that she gave
+offence some eighteen months ago to an old woman who had held an
+office of trust in the family, and who, after some incoherent threats,
+disappeared. This peculiar affection followed soon after. But the
+strangest part of the story is its association with the loss of an
+antique mirror, which stood in her dressing-room, and of which she
+constantly made use."
+
+Here the speaker's voice sank to a whisper; and Cosmo, although his very
+soul sat listening in his ears, could hear no more. He trembled too much
+to dare to address the ladies, even if it had been advisable to expose
+himself to their curiosity. The name of the Princess was well known to
+him, but he had never seen her; except indeed it was she, which now he
+hardly doubted, who had knelt before him on that dreadful night. Fearful
+of attracting attention, for, from the weak state of his health, he
+could not recover an appearance of calmness, he made his way to the open
+air, and reached his lodgings; glad in this, that he at least knew where
+she lived, although he never dreamed of approaching her openly, even
+if he should be happy enough to free her from her hateful bondage. He
+hoped, too, that as he had unexpectedly learned so much, the other and
+far more important part might be revealed to him ere long.
+
+
+*****
+
+
+"Have you seen Steinwald lately?"
+
+"No, I have not seen him for some time. He is almost a match for me at
+the rapier, and I suppose he thinks he needs no more lessons."
+
+"I wonder what has become of him. I want to see him very much. Let me
+see; the last time I saw him he was coming out of that old broker's
+den, to which, if you remember, you accompanied me once, to look at some
+armour. That is fully three weeks ago."
+
+This hint was enough for Cosmo. Von Steinwald was a man of influence in
+the court, well known for his reckless habits and fierce passions. The
+very possibility that the mirror should be in his possession was hell
+itself to Cosmo. But violent or hasty measures of any sort were most
+unlikely to succeed. All that he wanted was an opportunity of breaking
+the fatal glass; and to obtain this he must bide his time. He revolved
+many plans in his mind, but without being able to fix upon any.
+
+At length, one evening, as he was passing the house of Von Steinwald, he
+saw the windows more than usually brilliant. He watched for a while,
+and seeing that company began to arrive, hastened home, and dressed
+as richly as he could, in the hope of mingling with the guests
+unquestioned: in effecting which, there could be no difficulty for a man
+of his carriage.
+
+*****
+
+In a lofty, silent chamber, in another part of the city, lay a form more
+like marble than a living woman. The loveliness of death seemed frozen
+upon her face, for her lips were rigid, and her eyelids closed. Her long
+white hands were crossed over her breast, and no breathing disturbed
+their repose. Beside the dead, men speak in whispers, as if the deepest
+rest of all could be broken by the sound of a living voice. Just so,
+though the soul was evidently beyond the reach of all intimations from
+the senses, the two ladies, who sat beside her, spoke in the gentlest
+tones of subdued sorrow. "She has lain so for an hour."
+
+"This cannot last long, I fear."
+
+"How much thinner she has grown within the last few weeks! If she would
+only speak, and explain what she suffers, it would be better for her.
+I think she has visions in her trances, but nothing can induce her to
+refer to them when she is awake."
+
+"Does she ever speak in these trances?"
+
+"I have never heard her; but they say she walks sometimes, and once put
+the whole household in a terrible fright by disappearing for a whole
+hour, and returning drenched with rain, and almost dead with exhaustion
+and fright. But even then she would give no account of what had
+happened."
+
+A scarce audible murmur from the yet motionless lips of the lady
+here startled her attendants. After several ineffectual attempts at
+articulation, the word "COSMO!" burst from her. Then she lay still as
+before; but only for a moment. With a wild cry, she sprang from the
+couch erect on the floor, flung her arms above her head, with clasped
+and straining hands, and, her wide eyes flashing with light, called
+aloud, with a voice exultant as that of a spirit bursting from a
+sepulchre, "I am free! I am free! I thank thee!" Then she flung herself
+on the couch, and sobbed; then rose, and paced wildly up and down the
+room, with gestures of mingled delight and anxiety. Then turning to her
+motionless attendants--"Quick, Lisa, my cloak and hood!" Then lower--"I
+must go to him. Make haste, Lisa! You may come with me, if you will."
+
+In another moment they were in the street, hurrying along towards one
+of the bridges over the Moldau. The moon was near the zenith, and the
+streets were almost empty. The Princess soon outstripped her attendant,
+and was half-way over the bridge, before the other reached it.
+
+"Are you free, lady? The mirror is broken: are you free?"
+
+The words were spoken close beside her, as she hurried on. She turned;
+and there, leaning on the parapet in a recess of the bridge, stood
+Cosmo, in a splendid dress, but with a white and quivering face.
+
+"Cosmo!--I am free--and thy servant for ever. I was coming to you now."
+
+"And I to you, for Death made me bold; but I could get no further. Have
+I atoned at all? Do I love you a little--truly?"
+
+"Ah, I know now that you love me, my Cosmo; but what do you say about
+death?"
+
+He did not reply. His hand was pressed against his side. She looked more
+closely: the blood was welling from between the fingers. She flung her
+arms around him with a faint bitter wail.
+
+When Lisa came up, she found her mistress kneeling above a wan dead
+face, which smiled on in the spectral moonbeams.
+
+ And now I will say no more about these wondrous volumes; though
+I could tell many a tale out of them, and could, perhaps, vaguely
+represent some entrancing thoughts of a deeper kind which I found within
+them. From many a sultry noon till twilight, did I sit in that grand
+hall, buried and risen again in these old books. And I trust I have
+carried away in my soul some of the exhalations of their undying leaves.
+In after hours of deserved or needful sorrow, portions of what I read
+there have often come to me again, with an unexpected comforting;
+which was not fruitless, even though the comfort might seem in itself
+groundless and vain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+                                         "Your gallery
+             Ha we pass'd through, not without much content
+             In many singularities; but we saw not
+             That which my daughter came to look upon,
+             The state of her mother."
+                                     Winter's Tale.
+
+It seemed to me strange, that all this time I had heard no music in the
+fairy palace. I was convinced there must be music in it, but that my
+sense was as yet too gross to receive the influence of those mysterious
+motions that beget sound. Sometimes I felt sure, from the way the few
+figures of which I got such transitory glimpses passed me, or glided
+into vacancy before me, that they were moving to the law of music;
+and, in fact, several times I fancied for a moment that I heard a few
+wondrous tones coming I knew not whence. But they did not last long
+enough to convince me that I had heard them with the bodily sense. Such
+as they were, however, they took strange liberties with me, causing me
+to burst suddenly into tears, of which there was no presence to make
+me ashamed, or casting me into a kind of trance of speechless delight,
+which, passing as suddenly, left me faint and longing for more.
+
+Now, on an evening, before I had been a week in the palace, I was
+wandering through one lighted arcade and corridor after another. At
+length I arrived, through a door that closed behind me, in another vast
+hall of the palace. It was filled with a subdued crimson light; by
+which I saw that slender pillars of black, built close to walls of white
+marble, rose to a great height, and then, dividing into innumerable
+divergent arches, supported a roof, like the walls, of white marble,
+upon which the arches intersected intricately, forming a fretting of
+black upon the white, like the network of a skeleton-leaf. The floor was
+black.
+
+Between several pairs of the pillars upon every side, the place of the
+wall behind was occupied by a crimson curtain of thick silk, hanging in
+heavy and rich folds. Behind each of these curtains burned a powerful
+light, and these were the sources of the glow that filled the hall. A
+peculiar delicious odour pervaded the place. As soon as I entered, the
+old inspiration seemed to return to me, for I felt a strong impulse to
+sing; or rather, it seemed as if some one else was singing a song in my
+soul, which wanted to come forth at my lips, imbodied in my breath. But
+I kept silence; and feeling somewhat overcome by the red light and the
+perfume, as well as by the emotion within me, and seeing at one end of
+the hall a great crimson chair, more like a throne than a chair, beside
+a table of white marble, I went to it, and, throwing myself in it, gave
+myself up to a succession of images of bewildering beauty, which passed
+before my inward eye, in a long and occasionally crowded train. Here I
+sat for hours, I suppose; till, returning somewhat to myself, I saw that
+the red light had paled away, and felt a cool gentle breath gliding over
+my forehead. I rose and left the hall with unsteady steps, finding my
+way with some difficulty to my own chamber, and faintly remembering,
+as I went, that only in the marble cave, before I found the sleeping
+statue, had I ever had a similar experience.
+
+After this, I repaired every morning to the same hall; where I sometimes
+sat in the chair and dreamed deliciously, and sometimes walked up and
+down over the black floor. Sometimes I acted within myself a whole
+drama, during one of these perambulations; sometimes walked deliberately
+through the whole epic of a tale; sometimes ventured to sing a song,
+though with a shrinking fear of I knew not what. I was astonished at
+the beauty of my own voice as it rang through the place, or rather crept
+undulating, like a serpent of sound, along the walls and roof of this
+superb music-hall. Entrancing verses arose within me as of their own
+accord, chanting themselves to their own melodies, and requiring no
+addition of music to satisfy the inward sense. But, ever in the pauses
+of these, when the singing mood was upon me, I seemed to hear something
+like the distant sound of multitudes of dancers, and felt as if it
+was the unheard music, moving their rhythmic motion, that within me
+blossomed in verse and song. I felt, too, that could I but see the
+dance, I should, from the harmony of complicated movements, not of
+the dancers in relation to each other merely, but of each dancer
+individually in the manifested plastic power that moved the consenting
+harmonious form, understand the whole of the music on the billows of
+which they floated and swung.
+
+At length, one night, suddenly, when this feeling of dancing came upon
+me, I bethought me of lifting one of the crimson curtains, and looking
+if, perchance, behind it there might not be hid some other mystery,
+which might at least remove a step further the bewilderment of the
+present one. Nor was I altogether disappointed. I walked to one of the
+magnificent draperies, lifted a corner, and peeped in. There, burned
+a great, crimson, globe-shaped light, high in the cubical centre of
+another hall, which might be larger or less than that in which I stood,
+for its dimensions were not easily perceived, seeing that floor and roof
+and walls were entirely of black marble.
+
+The roof was supported by the same arrangement of pillars radiating in
+arches, as that of the first hall; only, here, the pillars and
+arches were of dark red. But what absorbed my delighted gaze, was an
+innumerable assembly of white marble statues, of every form, and in
+multitudinous posture, filling the hall throughout. These stood, in the
+ruddy glow of the great lamp, upon pedestals of jet black. Around the
+lamp shone in golden letters, plainly legible from where I stood, the
+two words--
+
+                     TOUCH NOT!
+
+There was in all this, however, no solution to the sound of dancing; and
+now I was aware that the influence on my mind had ceased. I did not
+go in that evening, for I was weary and faint, but I hoarded up the
+expectation of entering, as of a great coming joy.
+
+Next night I walked, as on the preceding, through the hall. My mind was
+filled with pictures and songs, and therewith so much absorbed, that
+I did not for some time think of looking within the curtain I had last
+night lifted. When the thought of doing so occurred to me first, I
+happened to be within a few yards of it. I became conscious, at the same
+moment, that the sound of dancing had been for some time in my ears. I
+approached the curtain quickly, and, lifting it, entered the black hall.
+Everything was still as death. I should have concluded that the
+sound must have proceeded from some other more distant quarter,
+which conclusion its faintness would, in ordinary circumstances, have
+necessitated from the first; but there was a something about the statues
+that caused me still to remain in doubt. As I said, each stood perfectly
+still upon its black pedestal: but there was about every one a certain
+air, not of motion, but as if it had just ceased from movement; as if
+the rest were not altogether of the marbly stillness of thousands of
+years. It was as if the peculiar atmosphere of each had yet a kind
+of invisible tremulousness; as if its agitated wavelets had not
+yet subsided into a perfect calm. I had the suspicion that they had
+anticipated my appearance, and had sprung, each, from the living joy of
+the dance, to the death-silence and blackness of its isolated pedestal,
+just before I entered. I walked across the central hall to the curtain
+opposite the one I had lifted, and, entering there, found all the
+appearances similar; only that the statues were different, and
+differently grouped. Neither did they produce on my mind that
+impression--of motion just expired, which I had experienced from the
+others. I found that behind every one of the crimson curtains was a
+similar hall, similarly lighted, and similarly occupied.
+
+The next night, I did not allow my thoughts to be absorbed as before
+with inward images, but crept stealthily along to the furthest curtain
+in the hall, from behind which, likewise, I had formerly seemed to hear
+the sound of dancing. I drew aside its edge as suddenly as I could, and,
+looking in, saw that the utmost stillness pervaded the vast place. I
+walked in, and passed through it to the other end.
+
+There I found that it communicated with a circular corridor, divided
+from it only by two rows of red columns. This corridor, which was black,
+with red niches holding statues, ran entirely about the statue-halls,
+forming a communication between the further ends of them all; further,
+that is, as regards the central hall of white whence they all diverged
+like radii, finding their circumference in the corridor.
+
+Round this corridor I now went, entering all the halls, of which there
+were twelve, and finding them all similarly constructed, but filled with
+quite various statues, of what seemed both ancient and modern sculpture.
+After I had simply walked through them, I found myself sufficiently
+tired to long for rest, and went to my own room.
+
+In the night I dreamed that, walking close by one of the curtains, I was
+suddenly seized with the desire to enter, and darted in. This time I was
+too quick for them. All the statues were in motion, statues no longer,
+but men and women--all shapes of beauty that ever sprang from the brain
+of the sculptor, mingled in the convolutions of a complicated dance.
+Passing through them to the further end, I almost started from my
+sleep on beholding, not taking part in the dance with the others, nor
+seemingly endued with life like them, but standing in marble coldness
+and rigidity upon a black pedestal in the extreme left corner--my lady
+of the cave; the marble beauty who sprang from her tomb or her cradle
+at the call of my songs. While I gazed in speechless astonishment and
+admiration, a dark shadow, descending from above like the curtain of a
+stage, gradually hid her entirely from my view. I felt with a shudder
+that this shadow was perchance my missing demon, whom I had not seen for
+days. I awoke with a stifled cry.
+
+Of course, the next evening I began my journey through the halls (for I
+knew not to which my dream had carried me), in the hope of proving the
+dream to be a true one, by discovering my marble beauty upon her black
+pedestal. At length, on reaching the tenth hall, I thought I
+recognised some of the forms I had seen dancing in my dream; and to my
+bewilderment, when I arrived at the extreme corner on the left, there
+stood, the only one I had yet seen, a vacant pedestal. It was exactly in
+the position occupied, in my dream, by the pedestal on which the white
+lady stood. Hope beat violently in my heart.
+
+"Now," said I to myself, "if yet another part of the dream would but
+come true, and I should succeed in surprising these forms in their
+nightly dance; it might be the rest would follow, and I should see on
+the pedestal my marble queen. Then surely if my songs sufficed to give
+her life before, when she lay in the bonds of alabaster, much more would
+they be sufficient then to give her volition and motion, when she alone
+of assembled crowds of marble forms, would be standing rigid and cold."
+
+But the difficulty was, to surprise the dancers. I had found that a
+premeditated attempt at surprise, though executed with the utmost care
+and rapidity, was of no avail. And, in my dream, it was effected by a
+sudden thought suddenly executed. I saw, therefore, that there was no
+plan of operation offering any probability of success, but this: to
+allow my mind to be occupied with other thoughts, as I wandered around
+the great centre-hall; and so wait till the impulse to enter one of the
+others should happen to arise in me just at the moment when I was close
+to one of the crimson curtains. For I hoped that if I entered any one of
+the twelve halls at the right moment, that would as it were give me the
+right of entrance to all the others, seeing they all had communication
+behind. I would not diminish the hope of the right chance, by supposing
+it necessary that a desire to enter should awake within me, precisely
+when I was close to the curtains of the tenth hall.
+
+At first the impulses to see recurred so continually, in spite of the
+crowded imagery that kept passing through my mind, that they formed
+too nearly a continuous chain, for the hope that any one of them would
+succeed as a surprise. But as I persisted in banishing them, they
+recurred less and less often; and after two or three, at considerable
+intervals, had come when the spot where I happened to be was unsuitable,
+the hope strengthened, that soon one might arise just at the right
+moment; namely, when, in walking round the hall, I should be close to
+one of the curtains.
+
+At length the right moment and the impulse coincided. I darted into the
+ninth hall. It was full of the most exquisite moving forms. The whole
+space wavered and swam with the involutions of an intricate dance. It
+seemed to break suddenly as I entered, and all made one or two bounds
+towards their pedestals; but, apparently on finding that they were
+thoroughly overtaken, they returned to their employment (for it seemed
+with them earnest enough to be called such) without further heeding
+me. Somewhat impeded by the floating crowd, I made what haste I could
+towards the bottom of the hall; whence, entering the corridor, I turned
+towards the tenth. I soon arrived at the corner I wanted to reach, for
+the corridor was comparatively empty; but, although the dancers here,
+after a little confusion, altogether disregarded my presence, I
+was dismayed at beholding, even yet, a vacant pedestal. But I had a
+conviction that she was near me. And as I looked at the pedestal, I
+thought I saw upon it, vaguely revealed as if through overlapping folds
+of drapery, the indistinct outlines of white feet. Yet there was no
+sign of drapery or concealing shadow whatever. But I remembered the
+descending shadow in my dream. And I hoped still in the power of my
+songs; thinking that what could dispel alabaster, might likewise be
+capable of dispelling what concealed my beauty now, even if it were the
+demon whose darkness had overshadowed all my life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+              "Alexander. 'When will you finish Campaspe?'
+               Apelles.  'Never finish: for always in absolute
+               beauty there is somewhat above art.'"
+                                          LYLY'S Campaspe.
+
+And now, what song should I sing to unveil my Isis, if indeed she was
+present unseen? I hurried away to the white hall of Phantasy, heedless
+of the innumerable forms of beauty that crowded my way: these might
+cross my eyes, but the unseen filled my brain. I wandered long, up and
+down the silent space: no songs came. My soul was not still enough for
+songs. Only in the silence and darkness of the soul's night, do those
+stars of the inward firmament sink to its lower surface from the singing
+realms beyond, and shine upon the conscious spirit. Here all effort was
+unavailing. If they came not, they could not be found.
+
+Next night, it was just the same. I walked through the red glimmer of
+the silent hall; but lonely as there I walked, as lonely trod my soul
+up and down the halls of the brain. At last I entered one of the
+statue-halls. The dance had just commenced, and I was delighted to find
+that I was free of their assembly. I walked on till I came to the sacred
+corner. There I found the pedestal just as I had left it, with the faint
+glimmer as of white feet still resting on the dead black. As soon as I
+saw it, I seemed to feel a presence which longed to become visible; and,
+as it were, called to me to gift it with self-manifestation, that it
+might shine on me. The power of song came to me. But the moment my
+voice, though I sang low and soft, stirred the air of the hall, the
+dancers started; the quick interweaving crowd shook, lost its form,
+divided; each figure sprang to its pedestal, and stood, a self-evolving
+life no more, but a rigid, life-like, marble shape, with the whole form
+composed into the expression of a single state or act. Silence rolled
+like a spiritual thunder through the grand space. My song had ceased,
+scared at its own influences. But I saw in the hand of one of the
+statues close by me, a harp whose chords yet quivered. I remembered
+that as she bounded past me, her harp had brushed against my arm; so
+the spell of the marble had not infolded it. I sprang to her, and with a
+gesture of entreaty, laid my hand on the harp. The marble hand, probably
+from its contact with the uncharmed harp, had strength enough to relax
+its hold, and yield the harp to me. No other motion indicated life.
+Instinctively I struck the chords and sang. And not to break upon the
+record of my song, I mention here, that as I sang the first four lines,
+the loveliest feet became clear upon the black pedestal; and ever as I
+sang, it was as if a veil were being lifted up from before the form, but
+an invisible veil, so that the statue appeared to grow before me, not
+so much by evolution, as by infinitesimal degrees of added height. And,
+while I sang, I did not feel that I stood by a statue, as indeed it
+appeared to be, but that a real woman-soul was revealing itself by
+successive stages of imbodiment, and consequent manifestatlon and
+expression.
+
+        Feet of beauty, firmly planting
+             Arches white on rosy heel!
+         Whence the life-spring, throbbing, panting,
+             Pulses upward to reveal!
+         Fairest things know least despising;
+             Foot and earth meet tenderly:
+         'Tis the woman, resting, rising
+             Upward to sublimity,
+         Rise the limbs, sedately sloping,
+             Strong and gentle, full and free;
+         Soft and slow, like certain hoping,
+             Drawing nigh the broad firm knee.
+         Up to speech!  As up to roses
+             Pants the life from leaf to flower,
+         So each blending change discloses,
+             Nearer still, expression's power.
+
+         Lo! fair sweeps, white surges, twining
+             Up and outward fearlessly!
+         Temple columns, close combining,
+             Lift a holy mystery.
+         Heart of mine! what strange surprises
+             Mount aloft on such a stair!
+         Some great vision upward rises,
+             Curving, bending, floating fair.
+
+         Bands and sweeps, and hill and hollow
+             Lead my fascinated eye;
+         Some apocalypse will follow,
+             Some new world of deity.
+         Zoned unseen, and outward swelling,
+             With new thoughts and wonders rife,
+         Queenly majesty foretelling,
+             See the expanding house of life!
+
+         Sudden heaving, unforbidden
+             Sighs eternal, still the same--
+         Mounts of snow have summits hidden
+             In the mists of uttered flame.
+         But the spirit, dawning nearly
+             Finds no speech for earnest pain;
+         Finds a soundless sighing merely--
+             Builds its stairs, and mounts again.
+
+         Heart, the queen, with secret hoping,
+             Sendeth out her waiting pair;
+         Hands, blind hands, half blindly groping,
+             Half inclasping visions rare;
+         And the great arms, heartways bending;
+             Might of Beauty, drawing home
+         There returning, and re-blending,
+             Where from roots of love they roam.
+
+         Build thy slopes of radiance beamy
+             Spirit, fair with womanhood!
+         Tower thy precipice, white-gleamy,
+             Climb unto the hour of good.
+         Dumb space will be rent asunder,
+             Now the shining column stands
+         Ready to be crowned with wonder
+             By the builder's joyous hands.
+
+         All the lines abroad are spreading,
+             Like a fountain's falling race.
+         Lo, the chin, first feature, treading,
+             Airy foot to rest the face!
+         Speech is nigh; oh, see the blushing,
+             Sweet approach of lip and breath!
+         Round the mouth dim silence, hushing,
+             Waits to die ecstatic death.
+
+         Span across in treble curving,
+             Bow of promise, upper lip!
+         Set them free, with gracious swerving;
+             Let the wing-words float and dip.
+         DUMB ART THOU?  O Love immortal,
+             More than words thy speech must be;
+         Childless yet the tender portal
+             Of the home of melody.
+
+         Now the nostrils open fearless,
+             Proud in calm unconsciousness,
+         Sure it must be something peerless
+             That the great Pan would express!
+         Deepens, crowds some meaning tender,
+             In the pure, dear lady-face.
+         Lo, a blinding burst of splendour!--
+             'Tis the free soul's issuing grace.
+
+         Two calm lakes of molten glory
+             Circling round unfathomed deeps!
+         Lightning-flashes, transitory,
+             Cross the gulfs where darkness sleeps.
+         This the gate, at last, of gladness,
+             To the outward striving me:
+         In a rain of light and sadness,
+             Out its loves and longings flee!
+
+         With a presence I am smitten
+             Dumb, with a foreknown surprise;
+         Presence greater yet than written
+             Even in the glorious eyes.
+         Through the gulfs, with inward gazes,
+             I may look till I am lost;
+         Wandering deep in spirit-mazes,
+             In a sea without a coast.
+
+         Windows open to the glorious!
+             Time and space, oh, far beyond!
+         Woman, ah! thou art victorious,
+             And I perish, overfond.
+         Springs aloft the yet Unspoken
+             In the forehead's endless grace,
+         Full of silences unbroken;
+             Infinite, unfeatured face.
+
+         Domes above, the mount of wonder;
+             Height and hollow wrapt in night;
+         Hiding in its caverns under
+             Woman-nations in their might.
+         Passing forms, the highest Human
+             Faints away to the Divine
+         Features none, of man or woman,
+             Can unveil the holiest shine.
+
+         Sideways, grooved porches only
+             Visible to passing eye,
+         Stand the silent, doorless, lonely
+             Entrance-gates of melody.
+         But all sounds fly in as boldly,
+             Groan and song, and kiss and cry
+         At their galleries, lifted coldly,
+             Darkly, 'twixt the earth and sky.
+
+         Beauty, thou art spent, thou knowest
+             So, in faint, half-glad despair,
+         From the summit thou o'erflowest
+             In a fall of torrent hair;
+         Hiding what thou hast created
+             In a half-transparent shroud:
+         Thus, with glory soft-abated,
+             Shines the moon through vapoury cloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+        "Ev'n the Styx, which ninefold her infoldeth
+             Hems not Ceres' daughter in its flow;
+         But she grasps the apple--ever holdeth
+             Her, sad Orcus, down below."
+                      SCHILLER, Das Ideal und das Leben.
+
+Ever as I sang, the veil was uplifted; ever as I sang, the signs of life
+grew; till, when the eyes dawned upon me, it was with that sunrise of
+splendour which my feeble song attempted to re-imbody.
+
+The wonder is, that I was not altogether overcome, but was able to
+complete my song as the unseen veil continued to rise. This ability came
+solely from the state of mental elevation in which I found myself. Only
+because uplifted in song, was I able to endure the blaze of the dawn.
+But I cannot tell whether she looked more of statue or more of woman;
+she seemed removed into that region of phantasy where all is intensely
+vivid, but nothing clearly defined. At last, as I sang of her descending
+hair, the glow of soul faded away, like a dying sunset. A lamp within
+had been extinguished, and the house of life shone blank in a winter
+morn. She was a statue once more--but visible, and that was much gained.
+Yet the revulsion from hope and fruition was such, that, unable to
+restrain myself, I sprang to her, and, in defiance of the law of the
+place, flung my arms around her, as if I would tear her from the grasp
+of a visible Death, and lifted her from the pedestal down to my heart.
+But no sooner had her feet ceased to be in contact with the black
+pedestal, than she shuddered and trembled all over; then, writhing
+from my arms, before I could tighten their hold, she sprang into the
+corridor, with the reproachful cry, "You should not have touched
+me!" darted behind one of the exterior pillars of the circle, and
+disappeared. I followed almost as fast; but ere I could reach the
+pillar, the sound of a closing door, the saddest of all sounds
+sometimes, fell on my ear; and, arriving at the spot where she had
+vanished, I saw, lighted by a pale yellow lamp which hung above it,
+a heavy, rough door, altogether unlike any others I had seen in
+the palace; for they were all of ebony, or ivory, or covered with
+silver-plates, or of some odorous wood, and very ornate; whereas this
+seemed of old oak, with heavy nails and iron studs. Notwithstanding the
+precipitation of my pursuit, I could not help reading, in silver letters
+beneath the lamp: "NO ONE ENTERS HERE WITHOUT THE LEAVE OF THE QUEEN."
+But what was the Queen to me, when I followed my white lady? I dashed
+the door to the wall and sprang through. Lo! I stood on a waste windy
+hill. Great stones like tombstones stood all about me. No door, no
+palace was to be seen. A white figure gleamed past me, wringing her
+hands, and crying, "Ah! you should have sung to me; you should have sung
+to me!" and disappeared behind one of the stones. I followed. A cold
+gust of wind met me from behind the stone; and when I looked, I saw
+nothing but a great hole in the earth, into which I could find no way
+of entering. Had she fallen in? I could not tell. I must wait for the
+daylight. I sat down and wept, for there was no help.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+         "First, I thought, almost despairing,
+             This must crush my spirit now;
+          Yet I bore it, and am bearing--
+             Only do not ask me how."
+                             HEINE.
+
+When the daylight came, it brought the possibility of action, but with
+it little of consolation. With the first visible increase of light,
+I gazed into the chasm, but could not, for more than an hour, see
+sufficiently well to discover its nature. At last I saw it was almost a
+perpendicular opening, like a roughly excavated well, only very large.
+I could perceive no bottom; and it was not till the sun actually rose,
+that I discovered a sort of natural staircase, in many parts little more
+than suggested, which led round and round the gulf, descending spirally
+into its abyss. I saw at once that this was my path; and without a
+moment's hesitation, glad to quit the sunlight, which stared at me most
+heartlessly, I commenced my tortuous descent. It was very difficult.
+In some parts I had to cling to the rocks like a bat. In one place, I
+dropped from the track down upon the next returning spire of the stair;
+which being broad in this particular portion, and standing out from the
+wall at right angles, received me upon my feet safe, though somewhat
+stupefied by the shock. After descending a great way, I found the stair
+ended at a narrow opening which entered the rock horizontally. Into this
+I crept, and, having entered, had just room to turn round. I put my head
+out into the shaft by which I had come down, and surveyed the course of
+my descent. Looking up, I saw the stars; although the sun must by this
+time have been high in the heavens. Looking below, I saw that the sides
+of the shaft went sheer down, smooth as glass; and far beneath me, I saw
+the reflection of the same stars I had seen in the heavens when I looked
+up. I turned again, and crept inwards some distance, when the passage
+widened, and I was at length able to stand and walk upright. Wider and
+loftier grew the way; new paths branched off on every side; great open
+halls appeared; till at last I found myself wandering on through an
+underground country, in which the sky was of rock, and instead of trees
+and flowers, there were only fantastic rocks and stones. And ever as I
+went, darker grew my thoughts, till at last I had no hope whatever of
+finding the white lady: I no longer called her to myself MY white lady.
+Whenever a choice was necessary, I always chose the path which seemed to
+lead downwards.
+
+At length I began to find that these regions were inhabited. From behind
+a rock a peal of harsh grating laughter, full of evil humour, rang
+through my ears, and, looking round, I saw a queer, goblin creature,
+with a great head and ridiculous features, just such as those described,
+in German histories and travels, as Kobolds. "What do you want with me?"
+I said. He pointed at me with a long forefinger, very thick at the root,
+and sharpened to a point, and answered, "He! he! he! what do YOU
+want here?" Then, changing his tone, he continued, with mock
+humility--"Honoured sir, vouchsafe to withdraw from thy slaves the
+lustre of thy august presence, for thy slaves cannot support its
+brightness." A second appeared, and struck in: "You are so big, you keep
+the sun from us. We can't see for you, and we're so cold." Thereupon
+arose, on all sides, the most terrific uproar of laughter, from voices
+like those of children in volume, but scrannel and harsh as those of
+decrepit age, though, unfortunately, without its weakness. The whole
+pandemonium of fairy devils, of all varieties of fantastic ugliness,
+both in form and feature, and of all sizes from one to four feet, seemed
+to have suddenly assembled about me. At length, after a great babble of
+talk among themselves, in a language unknown to me, and after seemingly
+endless gesticulation, consultation, elbow-nudging, and unmitigated
+peals of laughter, they formed into a circle about one of their number,
+who scrambled upon a stone, and, much to my surprise, and somewhat to
+my dismay, began to sing, in a voice corresponding in its nature to his
+talking one, from beginning to end, the song with which I had brought
+the light into the eyes of the white lady. He sang the same air too;
+and, all the time, maintained a face of mock entreaty and worship;
+accompanying the song with the travestied gestures of one playing on
+the lute. The whole assembly kept silence, except at the close of every
+verse, when they roared, and danced, and shouted with laughter, and
+flung themselves on the ground, in real or pretended convulsions of
+delight. When he had finished, the singer threw himself from the top
+of the stone, turning heels over head several times in his descent; and
+when he did alight, it was on the top of his head, on which he hopped
+about, making the most grotesque gesticulations with his legs in the
+air. Inexpressible laughter followed, which broke up in a shower of
+tiny stones from innumerable hands. They could not materially injure me,
+although they cut me on the head and face. I attempted to run away, but
+they all rushed upon me, and, laying hold of every part that afforded
+a grasp, held me tight. Crowding about me like bees, they shouted an
+insect-swarm of exasperating speeches up into my face, among which the
+most frequently recurring were--"You shan't have her; you shan't have
+her; he! he! he! She's for a better man; how he'll kiss her! how he'll
+kiss her!"
+
+The galvanic torrent of this battery of malevolence stung to life within
+me a spark of nobleness, and I said aloud, "Well, if he is a better man,
+let him have her."
+
+They instantly let go their hold of me, and fell back a step or two,
+with a whole broadside of grunts and humphs, as of unexpected and
+disappointed approbation. I made a step or two forward, and a lane was
+instantly opened for me through the midst of the grinning little antics,
+who bowed most politely to me on every side as I passed. After I had
+gone a few yards, I looked back, and saw them all standing quite still,
+looking after me, like a great school of boys; till suddenly one turned
+round, and with a loud whoop, rushed into the midst of the others. In
+an instant, the whole was one writhing and tumbling heap of contortion,
+reminding me of the live pyramids of intertwined snakes of which
+travellers make report. As soon as one was worked out of the mass, he
+bounded off a few paces, and then, with a somersault and a run, threw
+himself gyrating into the air, and descended with all his weight on the
+summit of the heaving and struggling chaos of fantastic figures. I left
+them still busy at this fierce and apparently aimless amusement. And as
+I went, I sang--
+
+        If a nobler waits for thee,
+             I will weep aside;
+         It is well that thou should'st be,
+             Of the nobler, bride.
+
+        For if love builds up the home,
+             Where the heart is free,
+         Homeless yet the heart must roam,
+             That has not found thee.
+
+        One must suffer: I, for her
+             Yield in her my part
+         Take her, thou art worthier--
+             Still I be still, my heart!
+
+         Gift ungotten! largess high
+             Of a frustrate will!
+          But to yield it lovingly
+             Is a something still.
+
+Then a little song arose of itself in my soul; and I felt for the
+moment, while it sank sadly within me, as if I was once more walking up
+and down the white hall of Phantasy in the Fairy Palace. But this lasted
+no longer than the song; as will be seen.
+
+        Do not vex thy violet
+             Perfume to afford:
+         Else no odour thou wilt get
+             From its little hoard.
+
+        In thy lady's gracious eyes
+             Look not thou too long;
+         Else from them the glory flies,
+             And thou dost her wrong.
+
+        Come not thou too near the maid,
+             Clasp her not too wild;
+         Else the splendour is allayed,
+             And thy heart beguiled.
+
+A crash of laughter, more discordant and deriding than any I had yet
+heard, invaded my ears. Looking on in the direction of the sound, I saw
+a little elderly woman, much taller, however, than the goblins I had
+just left, seated upon a stone by the side of the path. She rose, as I
+drew near, and came forward to meet me.
+
+She was very plain and commonplace in appearance, without being
+hideously ugly. Looking up in my face with a stupid sneer, she said:
+"Isn't it a pity you haven't a pretty girl to walk all alone with
+you through this sweet country? How different everything would look?
+wouldn't it? Strange that one can never have what one would like best!
+How the roses would bloom and all that, even in this infernal hole!
+wouldn't they, Anodos? Her eyes would light up the old cave, wouldn't
+they?"
+
+"That depends on who the pretty girl should be," replied I.
+
+"Not so very much matter that," she answered; "look here."
+
+I had turned to go away as I gave my reply, but now I stopped and looked
+at her. As a rough unsightly bud might suddenly blossom into the most
+lovely flower; or rather, as a sunbeam bursts through a shapeless cloud,
+and transfigures the earth; so burst a face of resplendent beauty, as it
+were THROUGH the unsightly visage of the woman, destroying it with light
+as it dawned through it. A summer sky rose above me, gray with heat;
+across a shining slumberous landscape, looked from afar the peaks of
+snow-capped mountains; and down from a great rock beside me fell a sheet
+of water mad with its own delight.
+
+"Stay with me," she said, lifting up her exquisite face, and looking
+full in mine.
+
+I drew back. Again the infernal laugh grated upon my ears; again the
+rocks closed in around me, and the ugly woman looked at me with wicked,
+mocking hazel eyes.
+
+"You shall have your reward," said she. "You shall see your white lady
+again."
+
+"That lies not with you," I replied, and turned and left her.
+
+She followed me with shriek upon shriek of laughter, as I went on my
+way.
+
+I may mention here, that although there was always light enough to see
+my path and a few yards on every side of me, I never could find out the
+source of this sad sepulchral illumination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+        "In the wind's uproar, the sea's raging grim,
+          And the sighs that are born in him."
+                                     HEINE.
+
+
+        "From dreams of bliss shall men awake
+          One day, but not to weep:
+          The dreams remain; they only break
+          The mirror of the sleep."
+                                    JEAN PAUL, Hesperus.
+
+How I got through this dreary part of my travels, I do not know. I do
+not think I was upheld by the hope that any moment the light might break
+in upon me; for I scarcely thought about that. I went on with a dull
+endurance, varied by moments of uncontrollable sadness; for more and
+more the conviction grew upon me that I should never see the white
+lady again. It may seem strange that one with whom I had held so little
+communion should have so engrossed my thoughts; but benefits conferred
+awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others.
+Besides being delighted and proud that my songs had called the
+beautiful creature to life, the same fact caused me to feel a tenderness
+unspeakable for her, accompanied with a kind of feeling of property in
+her; for so the goblin Selfishness would reward the angel Love. When
+to all this is added, an overpowering sense of her beauty, and
+an unquestioning conviction that this was a true index to inward
+loveliness, it may be understood how it came to pass that my imagination
+filled my whole soul with the play of its own multitudinous colours and
+harmonies around the form which yet stood, a gracious marble radiance,
+in the midst of ITS white hall of phantasy. The time passed by unheeded;
+for my thoughts were busy. Perhaps this was also in part the cause of my
+needing no food, and never thinking how I should find any, during this
+subterraneous part of my travels. How long they endured I could not
+tell, for I had no means of measuring time; and when I looked back,
+there was such a discrepancy between the decisions of my imagination
+and my judgment, as to the length of time that had passed, that I was
+bewildered, and gave up all attempts to arrive at any conclusion on the
+point.
+
+A gray mist continually gathered behind me. When I looked back towards
+the past, this mist was the medium through which my eyes had to strain
+for a vision of what had gone by; and the form of the white lady had
+receded into an unknown region. At length the country of rock began
+to close again around me, gradually and slowly narrowing, till I found
+myself walking in a gallery of rock once more, both sides of which I
+could touch with my outstretched hands. It narrowed yet, until I
+was forced to move carefully, in order to avoid striking against the
+projecting pieces of rock. The roof sank lower and lower, until I was
+compelled, first to stoop, and then to creep on my hands and knees.
+It recalled terrible dreams of childhood; but I was not much afraid,
+because I felt sure that this was my path, and my only hope of leaving
+Fairy Land, of which I was now almost weary.
+
+At length, on getting past an abrupt turn in the passage, through
+which I had to force myself, I saw, a few yards ahead of me, the
+long-forgotten daylight shining through a small opening, to which the
+path, if path it could now be called, led me. With great difficulty I
+accomplished these last few yards, and came forth to the day. I stood on
+the shore of a wintry sea, with a wintry sun just a few feet above its
+horizon-edge. It was bare, and waste, and gray. Hundreds of hopeless
+waves rushed constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon a beach
+of great loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both
+directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of
+gray; nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of the
+breaking, and the moan of the retreating wave. No rock lifted up a
+sheltering severity above the dreariness around; even that from which I
+had myself emerged rose scarcely a foot above the opening by which I
+had reached the dismal day, more dismal even than the tomb I had left.
+A cold, death-like wind swept across the shore, seeming to issue from a
+pale mouth of cloud upon the horizon. Sign of life was nowhere visible.
+I wandered over the stones, up and down the beach, a human imbodiment of
+the nature around me. The wind increased; its keen waves flowed through
+my soul; the foam rushed higher up the stones; a few dead stars began
+to gleam in the east; the sound of the waves grew louder and yet more
+despairing. A dark curtain of cloud was lifted up, and a pale blue rent
+shone between its foot and the edge of the sea, out from which rushed an
+icy storm of frozen wind, that tore the waters into spray as it passed,
+and flung the billows in raving heaps upon the desolate shore. I could
+bear it no longer.
+
+"I will not be tortured to death," I cried; "I will meet it half-way.
+The life within me is yet enough to bear me up to the face of Death, and
+then I die unconquered."
+
+Before it had grown so dark, I had observed, though without any
+particular interest, that on one part of the shore a low platform of
+rock seemed to run out far into the midst of the breaking waters.
+
+Towards this I now went, scrambling over smooth stones, to which scarce
+even a particle of sea-weed clung; and having found it, I got on it, and
+followed its direction, as near as I could guess, out into the tumbling
+chaos. I could hardly keep my feet against the wind and sea. The waves
+repeatedly all but swept me off my path; but I kept on my way, till I
+reached the end of the low promontory, which, in the fall of the waves,
+rose a good many feet above the surface, and, in their rise, was covered
+with their waters. I stood one moment and gazed into the heaving abyss
+beneath me; then plunged headlong into the mounting wave below. A
+blessing, like the kiss of a mother, seemed to alight on my soul; a
+calm, deeper than that which accompanies a hope deferred, bathed my
+spirit. I sank far into the waters, and sought not to return. I felt as
+if once more the great arms of the beech-tree were around me, soothing
+me after the miseries I had passed through, and telling me, like a
+little sick child, that I should be better to-morrow. The waters of
+themselves lifted me, as with loving arms, to the surface. I breathed
+again, but did not unclose my eyes. I would not look on the wintry sea,
+and the pitiless gray sky. Thus I floated, till something gently touched
+me. It was a little boat floating beside me. How it came there I could
+not tell; but it rose and sank on the waters, and kept touching me in
+its fall, as if with a human will to let me know that help was by me. It
+was a little gay-coloured boat, seemingly covered with glistering scales
+like those of a fish, all of brilliant rainbow hues. I scrambled into
+it, and lay down in the bottom, with a sense of exquisite repose.
+
+Then I drew over me a rich, heavy, purple cloth that was beside me; and,
+lying still, knew, by the sound of the waters, that my little bark was
+fleeting rapidly onwards. Finding, however, none of that stormy motion
+which the sea had manifested when I beheld it from the shore, I opened
+my eyes; and, looking first up, saw above me the deep violet sky of a
+warm southern night; and then, lifting my head, saw that I was sailing
+fast upon a summer sea, in the last border of a southern twilight. The
+aureole of the sun yet shot the extreme faint tips of its longest rays
+above the horizon-waves, and withdrew them not. It was a perpetual
+twilight. The stars, great and earnest, like children's eyes, bent down
+lovingly towards the waters; and the reflected stars within seemed to
+float up, as if longing to meet their embraces. But when I looked down,
+a new wonder met my view. For, vaguely revealed beneath the wave, I
+floated above my whole Past. The fields of my childhood flitted by; the
+halls of my youthful labours; the streets of great cities where I had
+dwelt; and the assemblies of men and women wherein I had wearied myself
+seeking for rest. But so indistinct were the visions, that sometimes
+I thought I was sailing on a shallow sea, and that strange rocks and
+forests of sea-plants beguiled my eye, sufficiently to be transformed,
+by the magic of the phantasy, into well-known objects and regions. Yet,
+at times, a beloved form seemed to lie close beneath me in sleep; and
+the eyelids would tremble as if about to forsake the conscious eye;
+and the arms would heave upwards, as if in dreams they sought for a
+satisfying presence. But these motions might come only from the heaving
+of the waters between those forms and me. Soon I fell asleep, overcome
+with fatigue and delight. In dreams of unspeakable joy--of restored
+friendships; of revived embraces; of love which said it had never died;
+of faces that had vanished long ago, yet said with smiling lips that
+they knew nothing of the grave; of pardons implored, and granted with
+such bursting floods of love, that I was almost glad I had sinned--thus
+I passed through this wondrous twilight. I awoke with the feeling that I
+had been kissed and loved to my heart's content; and found that my boat
+was floating motionless by the grassy shore of a little island.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+     "In still rest, in changeless simplicity, I bear,
+     uninterrupted, the consciousness of the whole of Humanity
+     within me."--SCHLEIERMACHERS, Monologen.
+
+            "... such a sweetness, such a grace,
+                 In all thy speech appear,
+              That what to th'eye a beauteous face,
+                 That thy tongue is to the ear."
+                                          --COWLEY.
+
+The water was deep to the very edge; and I sprang from the little boat
+upon a soft grassy turf. The island seemed rich with a profusion of all
+grasses and low flowers. All delicate lowly things were most plentiful;
+but no trees rose skywards, not even a bush overtopped the tall grasses,
+except in one place near the cottage I am about to describe, where a few
+plants of the gum-cistus, which drops every night all the blossoms that
+the day brings forth, formed a kind of natural arbour. The whole island
+lay open to the sky and sea. It rose nowhere more than a few feet above
+the level of the waters, which flowed deep all around its border. Here
+there seemed to be neither tide nor storm. A sense of persistent calm
+and fulness arose in the mind at the sight of the slow, pulse-like rise
+and fall of the deep, clear, unrippled waters against the bank of the
+island, for shore it could hardly be called, being so much more like
+the edge of a full, solemn river. As I walked over the grass towards the
+cottage, which stood at a little distance from the bank, all the flowers
+of childhood looked at me with perfect child-eyes out of the grass. My
+heart, softened by the dreams through which it had passed, overflowed
+in a sad, tender love towards them. They looked to me like children
+impregnably fortified in a helpless confidence. The sun stood half-way
+down the western sky, shining very soft and golden; and there grew a
+second world of shadows amidst the world of grasses and wild flowers.
+
+The cottage was square, with low walls, and a high pyramidal roof
+thatched with long reeds, of which the withered blossoms hung over all
+the eaves. It is noticeable that most of the buildings I saw in Fairy
+Land were cottages. There was no path to a door, nor, indeed, was there
+any track worn by footsteps in the island.
+
+The cottage rose right out of the smooth turf. It had no windows that I
+could see; but there was a door in the centre of the side facing me,
+up to which I went. I knocked, and the sweetest voice I had ever heard
+said, "Come in." I entered. A bright fire was burning on a hearth in
+the centre of the earthern floor, and the smoke found its way out at an
+opening in the centre of the pyramidal roof. Over the fire hung a little
+pot, and over the pot bent a woman-face, the most wonderful, I thought,
+that I had ever beheld. For it was older than any countenance I had ever
+looked upon. There was not a spot in which a wrinkle could lie, where a
+wrinkle lay not. And the skin was ancient and brown, like old parchment.
+The woman's form was tall and spare: and when she stood up to welcome
+me, I saw that she was straight as an arrow. Could that voice of
+sweetness have issued from those lips of age? Mild as they were, could
+they be the portals whence flowed such melody? But the moment I saw
+her eyes, I no longer wondered at her voice: they were absolutely
+young--those of a woman of five-and-twenty, large, and of a clear gray.
+Wrinkles had beset them all about; the eyelids themselves were old, and
+heavy, and worn; but the eyes were very incarnations of soft light. She
+held out her hand to me, and the voice of sweetness again greeted me,
+with the single word, "Welcome." She set an old wooden chair for me,
+near the fire, and went on with her cooking. A wondrous sense of refuge
+and repose came upon me. I felt like a boy who has got home from school,
+miles across the hills, through a heavy storm of wind and snow. Almost,
+as I gazed on her, I sprang from my seat to kiss those old lips. And
+when, having finished her cooking, she brought some of the dish she had
+prepared, and set it on a little table by me, covered with a snow-white
+cloth, I could not help laying my head on her bosom, and bursting
+into happy tears. She put her arms round me, saying, "Poor child; poor
+child!"
+
+As I continued to weep, she gently disengaged herself, and, taking a
+spoon, put some of the food (I did not know what it was) to my lips,
+entreating me most endearingly to swallow it. To please her, I made an
+effort, and succeeded. She went on feeding me like a baby, with one arm
+round me, till I looked up in her face and smiled: then she gave me the
+spoon and told me to eat, for it would do me good. I obeyed her, and
+found myself wonderfully refreshed. Then she drew near the fire an
+old-fashioned couch that was in the cottage, and making me lie down
+upon it, sat at my feet, and began to sing. Amazing store of old ballads
+rippled from her lips, over the pebbles of ancient tunes; and the voice
+that sang was sweet as the voice of a tuneful maiden that singeth ever
+from very fulness of song. The songs were almost all sad, but with a
+sound of comfort. One I can faintly recall. It was something like this:
+
+            Sir Aglovaile through the churchyard rode;
+                 SING, ALL ALONE I LIE:
+             Little recked he where'er he yode,
+                 ALL ALONE, UP IN THE SKY.
+
+             Swerved his courser, and plunged with fear
+                 ALL ALONE I LIE:
+             His cry might have wakened the dead men near,
+                 ALL ALONE, UP IN THE SKY.
+
+            The very dead that lay at his feet,
+             Lapt in the mouldy winding-sheet.
+
+            But he curbed him and spurred him, until he stood
+             Still in his place, like a horse of wood,
+
+            With nostrils uplift, and eyes wide and wan;
+             But the sweat in streams from his fetlocks ran.
+
+            A ghost grew out of the shadowy air,
+             And sat in the midst of her moony hair.
+
+            In her gleamy hair she sat and wept;
+             In the dreamful moon they lay and slept;
+
+            The shadows above, and the bodies below,
+             Lay and slept in the moonbeams slow.
+
+            And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind
+             Over the stubble left behind:
+
+              Alas, how easily things go wrong!
+               A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
+              And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
+                 And life is never the same again.
+
+                Alas, how hardly things go right!
+                 'Tis hard to watch on a summer night,
+                 For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay,
+                 And the summer night is a winter day.
+
+            "Oh, lovely ghosts my heart is woes
+             To see thee weeping and wailing so.
+
+            Oh, lovely ghost," said the fearless knight,
+             "Can the sword of a warrior set it right?
+
+            Or prayer of bedesman, praying mild,
+             As a cup of water a feverish child,
+
+            Sooth thee at last, in dreamless mood
+             To sleep the sleep a dead lady should?
+
+            Thine eyes they fill me with longing sore,
+             As if I had known thee for evermore.
+
+            Oh, lovely ghost, I could leave the day
+             To sit with thee in the moon away
+
+            If thou wouldst trust me, and lay thy head
+             To rest on a bosom that is not dead."
+             The lady sprang up with a strange ghost-cry,
+             And she flung her white ghost-arms on high:
+
+            And she laughed a laugh that was not gay,
+             And it lengthened out till it died away;
+
+            And the dead beneath turned and moaned,
+             And the yew-trees above they shuddered and groaned.
+
+            "Will he love me twice with a love that is vain?
+             Will he kill the poor ghost yet again?
+
+            I thought thou wert good; but I said, and wept:
+             'Can I have dreamed who have not slept?'
+
+            And I knew, alas! or ever I would,
+             Whether I dreamed, or thou wert good.
+
+            When my baby died, my brain grew wild.
+             I awoke, and found I was with my child."
+
+            "If thou art the ghost of my Adelaide,
+             How is it?  Thou wert but a village maid,
+
+            And thou seemest an angel lady white,
+             Though thin, and wan, and past delight."
+
+            The lady smiled a flickering smile,
+             And she pressed her temples hard the while.
+
+            "Thou seest that Death for a woman can
+             Do more than knighthood for a man."
+
+            "But show me the child thou callest mine,
+             Is she out to-night in the ghost's sunshine?"
+
+            "In St. Peter's Church she is playing on,
+             At hide-and-seek, with Apostle John.
+
+            When the moonbeams right through the window go,
+             Where the twelve are standing in glorious show,
+
+            She says the rest of them do not stir,
+             But one comes down to play with her.
+
+            Then I can go where I list, and weep,
+             For good St. John my child will keep."
+
+            "Thy beauty filleth the very air,
+              Never saw I a woman so fair."
+
+            "Come, if thou darest, and sit by my side;
+              But do not touch me, or woe will betide.
+
+            Alas, I am weak: I might well know
+             This gladness betokens some further woe.
+
+             Yet come.  It will come.  I will bear it.  I can.
+              For thou lovest me yet--though but as a man."
+
+            The knight dismounted in earnest speed;
+              Away through the tombstones thundered the steed,
+
+            And fell by the outer wall, and died.
+             But the knight he kneeled by the lady's side;
+
+            Kneeled beside her in wondrous bliss,
+             Rapt in an everlasting kiss:
+
+            Though never his lips come the lady nigh,
+             And his eyes alone on her beauty lie.
+
+            All the night long, till the cock crew loud,
+             He kneeled by the lady, lapt in her shroud.
+
+            And what they said, I may not say:
+             Dead night was sweeter than living day.
+
+            How she made him so blissful glad
+             Who made her and found her so ghostly sad,
+
+            I may not tell; but it needs no touch
+             To make them blessed who love so much.
+
+            "Come every night, my ghost, to me;
+             And one night I will come to thee.
+
+            'Tis good to have a ghostly wife:
+             She will not tremble at clang of strife;
+
+            She will only hearken, amid the din,
+             Behind the door, if he cometh in."
+
+            And this is how Sir Aglovaile
+            Often walked in the moonlight pale.
+
+            And oft when the crescent but thinned the gloom,
+             Full orbed moonlight filled his room;
+
+            And through beneath his chamber door,
+             Fell a ghostly gleam on the outer floor;
+
+            And they that passed, in fear averred
+             That murmured words they often heard.
+
+            'Twas then that the eastern crescent shone
+              Through the chancel window, and good St. John
+
+            Played with the ghost-child all the night,
+             And the mother was free till the morning light,
+
+            And sped through the dawning night, to stay
+             With Aglovaile till the break of day.
+
+            And their love was a rapture, lone and high,
+             And dumb as the moon in the topmost sky.
+
+            One night Sir Aglovaile, weary, slept
+             And dreamed a dream wherein he wept.
+
+            A warrior he was, not often wept he,
+             But this night he wept full bitterly.
+
+            He woke--beside him the ghost-girl shone
+             Out of the dark: 'twas the eve of St. John.
+
+            He had dreamed a dream of a still, dark wood,
+             Where the maiden of old beside him stood;
+
+            But a mist came down, and caught her away,
+             And he sought her in vain through the pathless day,
+
+            Till he wept with the grief that can do no more,
+             And thought he had dreamt the dream before.
+
+            From bursting heart the weeping flowed on;
+             And lo! beside him the ghost-girl shone;
+
+            Shone like the light on a harbour's breast,
+             Over the sea of his dream's unrest;
+
+            Shone like the wondrous, nameless boon,
+             That the heart seeks ever, night or noon:
+
+            Warnings forgotten, when needed most,
+             He clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost.
+
+            She wailed aloud, and faded, and sank.
+             With upturn'd white face, cold and blank,
+
+            In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale,
+             And she came no more to Sir Aglovaile.
+
+            Only a voice, when winds were wild,
+             Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child.
+
+            Alas, how easily things go wrong!
+             A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,
+             And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
+             And life is never the same again.
+
+This was one of the simplest of her songs, which, perhaps, is the cause
+of my being able to remember it better than most of the others. While
+she sung, I was in Elysium, with the sense of a rich soul upholding,
+embracing, and overhanging mine, full of all plenty and bounty. I felt
+as if she could give me everything I wanted; as if I should never wish
+to leave her, but would be content to be sung to and fed by her, day
+after day, as years rolled by. At last I fell asleep while she sang.
+
+When I awoke, I knew not whether it was night or day. The fire had sunk
+to a few red embers, which just gave light enough to show me the woman
+standing a few feet from me, with her back towards me, facing the
+door by which I had entered. She was weeping, but very gently and
+plentifully. The tears seemed to come freely from her heart. Thus she
+stood for a few minutes; then, slowly turning at right angles to her
+former position, she faced another of the four sides of the cottage.
+I now observed, for the first time, that here was a door likewise; and
+that, indeed, there was one in the centre of every side of the cottage.
+
+When she looked towards the second door, her tears ceased to flow, but
+sighs took their place. She often closed her eyes as she stood; and
+every time she closed her eyes, a gentle sigh seemed to be born in her
+heart, and to escape at her lips. But when her eyes were open, her
+sighs were deep and very sad, and shook her whole frame. Then she turned
+towards the third door, and a cry as of fear or suppressed pain broke
+from her; but she seemed to hearten herself against the dismay, and
+to front it steadily; for, although I often heard a slight cry, and
+sometimes a moan, yet she never moved or bent her head, and I felt sure
+that her eyes never closed. Then she turned to the fourth door, and
+I saw her shudder, and then stand still as a statue; till at last she
+turned towards me and approached the fire. I saw that her face was white
+as death. But she gave one look upwards, and smiled the sweetest, most
+child-innocent smile; then heaped fresh wood on the fire, and, sitting
+down by the blaze, drew her wheel near her, and began to spin. While
+she spun, she murmured a low strange song, to which the hum of the wheel
+made a kind of infinite symphony. At length she paused in her spinning
+and singing, and glanced towards me, like a mother who looks whether
+or not her child gives signs of waking. She smiled when she saw that my
+eyes were open. I asked her whether it was day yet. She answered, "It is
+always day here, so long as I keep my fire burning."
+
+I felt wonderfully refreshed; and a great desire to see more of the
+island awoke within me. I rose, and saying that I wished to look about
+me, went towards the door by which I had entered.
+
+"Stay a moment," said my hostess, with some trepidation in her voice.
+"Listen to me. You will not see what you expect when you go out of that
+door. Only remember this: whenever you wish to come back to me, enter
+wherever you see this mark."
+
+She held up her left hand between me and the fire. Upon the palm, which
+appeared almost transparent, I saw, in dark red, a mark like this -->
+which I took care to fix in my mind.
+
+She then kissed me, and bade me good-bye with a solemnity that awed me;
+and bewildered me too, seeing I was only going out for a little ramble
+in an island, which I did not believe larger than could easily be
+compassed in a few hours' walk at most. As I went she resumed her
+spinning.
+
+I opened the door, and stepped out. The moment my foot touched the
+smooth sward, I seemed to issue from the door of an old barn on my
+father's estate, where, in the hot afternoons, I used to go and lie
+amongst the straw, and read. It seemed to me now that I had been asleep
+there. At a little distance in the field, I saw two of my brothers at
+play. The moment they caught sight of me, they called out to me to come
+and join them, which I did; and we played together as we had done years
+ago, till the red sun went down in the west, and the gray fog began
+to rise from the river. Then we went home together with a strange
+happiness. As we went, we heard the continually renewed larum of a
+landrail in the long grass. One of my brothers and I separated to a
+little distance, and each commenced running towards the part whence the
+sound appeared to come, in the hope of approaching the spot where the
+bird was, and so getting at least a sight of it, if we should not be
+able to capture the little creature. My father's voice recalled us from
+trampling down the rich long grass, soon to be cut down and laid aside
+for the winter. I had quite forgotten all about Fairy Land, and the
+wonderful old woman, and the curious red mark.
+
+My favourite brother and I shared the same bed. Some childish dispute
+arose between us; and our last words, ere we fell asleep, were not of
+kindness, notwithstanding the pleasures of the day. When I woke in the
+morning, I missed him. He had risen early, and had gone to bathe in the
+river. In another hour, he was brought home drowned. Alas! alas! if we
+had only gone to sleep as usual, the one with his arm about the other!
+Amidst the horror of the moment, a strange conviction flashed across my
+mind, that I had gone through the very same once before.
+
+I rushed out of the house, I knew not why, sobbing and crying bitterly.
+I ran through the fields in aimless distress, till, passing the old
+barn, I caught sight of a red mark on the door. The merest trifles
+sometimes rivet the attention in the deepest misery; the intellect has
+so little to do with grief. I went up to look at this mark, which I did
+not remember ever to have seen before. As I looked at it, I thought I
+would go in and lie down amongst the straw, for I was very weary with
+running about and weeping. I opened the door; and there in the cottage
+sat the old woman as I had left her, at her spinning-wheel.
+
+"I did not expect you quite so soon," she said, as I shut the door
+behind me. I went up to the couch, and threw myself on it with that
+fatigue wherewith one awakes from a feverish dream of hopeless grief.
+
+The old woman sang:
+
+        The great sun, benighted,
+             May faint from the sky;
+         But love, once uplighted,
+             Will never more die.
+
+        Form, with its brightness,
+             From eyes will depart:
+         It walketh, in whiteness,
+             The halls of the heart.
+
+Ere she had ceased singing, my courage had returned. I started from the
+couch, and, without taking leave of the old woman, opened the door of
+Sighs, and sprang into what should appear.
+
+I stood in a lordly hall, where, by a blazing fire on the hearth, sat a
+lady, waiting, I knew, for some one long desired. A mirror was near me,
+but I saw that my form had no place within its depths, so I feared not
+that I should be seen. The lady wonderfully resembled my marble lady,
+but was altogether of the daughters of men, and I could not tell whether
+or not it was she.
+
+It was not for me she waited. The tramp of a great horse rang through
+the court without. It ceased, and the clang of armour told that his
+rider alighted, and the sound of his ringing heels approached the hall.
+The door opened; but the lady waited, for she would meet her lord alone.
+He strode in: she flew like a home-bound dove into his arms, and nestled
+on the hard steel. It was the knight of the soiled armour. But now the
+armour shone like polished glass; and strange to tell, though the mirror
+reflected not my form, I saw a dim shadow of myself in the shining
+steel.
+
+"O my beloved, thou art come, and I am blessed."
+
+Her soft fingers speedily overcame the hard clasp of his helmet; one by
+one she undid the buckles of his armour; and she toiled under the
+weight of the mail, as she WOULD carry it aside. Then she unclasped
+his greaves, and unbuckled his spurs; and once more she sprang into
+his arms, and laid her head where she could now feel the beating of his
+heart. Then she disengaged herself from his embrace, and, moving back a
+step or two, gazed at him. He stood there a mighty form, crowned with a
+noble head, where all sadness had disappeared, or had been absorbed in
+solemn purpose. Yet I suppose that he looked more thoughtful than
+the lady had expected to see him, for she did not renew her caresses,
+although his face glowed with love, and the few words he spoke were
+as mighty deeds for strength; but she led him towards the hearth, and
+seated him in an ancient chair, and set wine before him, and sat at his
+feet.
+
+"I am sad," he said, "when I think of the youth whom I met twice in the
+forests of Fairy Land; and who, you say, twice, with his songs, roused
+you from the death-sleep of an evil enchantment. There was something
+noble in him, but it was a nobleness of thought, and not of deed. He may
+yet perish of vile fear."
+
+"Ah!" returned the lady, "you saved him once, and for that I thank you;
+for may I not say that I somewhat loved him? But tell me how you fared,
+when you struck your battle-axe into the ash-tree, and he came and found
+you; for so much of the story you had told me, when the beggar-child
+came and took you away."
+
+"As soon as I saw him," rejoined the knight, "I knew that earthly arms
+availed not against such as he; and that my soul must meet him in its
+naked strength. So I unclasped my helm, and flung it on the ground; and,
+holding my good axe yet in my hand, gazed at him with steady eyes. On
+he came, a horror indeed, but I did not flinch. Endurance must conquer,
+where force could not reach. He came nearer and nearer, till the ghastly
+face was close to mine. A shudder as of death ran through me; but I
+think I did not move, for he seemed to quail, and retreated. As soon
+as he gave back, I struck one more sturdy blow on the stem of his tree,
+that the forest rang; and then looked at him again. He writhed and
+grinned with rage and apparent pain, and again approached me, but
+retreated sooner than before. I heeded him no more, but hewed with a
+will at the tree, till the trunk creaked, and the head bowed, and with a
+crash it fell to the earth. Then I looked up from my labour, and lo! the
+spectre had vanished, and I saw him no more; nor ever in my wanderings
+have I heard of him again."
+
+"Well struck! well withstood! my hero," said the lady.
+
+"But," said the knight, somewhat troubled, "dost thou love the youth
+still?"
+
+"Ah!" she replied, "how can I help it? He woke me from worse than death;
+he loved me. I had never been for thee, if he had not sought me first.
+But I love him not as I love thee. He was but the moon of my night; thou
+art the sun of my day, O beloved."
+
+"Thou art right," returned the noble man. "It were hard, indeed, not to
+have some love in return for such a gift as he hath given thee. I, too,
+owe him more than words can speak."
+
+Humbled before them, with an aching and desolate heart, I yet could not
+restrain my words:
+
+"Let me, then, be the moon of thy night still, O woman! And when thy day
+is beclouded, as the fairest days will be, let some song of mine comfort
+thee, as an old, withered, half-forgotten thing, that belongs to an
+ancient mournful hour of uncompleted birth, which yet was beautiful in
+its time."
+
+They sat silent, and I almost thought they were listening. The colour of
+the lady's eyes grew deeper and deeper; the slow tears grew, and filled
+them, and overflowed. They rose, and passed, hand in hand, close
+to where I stood; and each looked towards me in passing. Then they
+disappeared through a door which closed behind them; but, ere it closed,
+I saw that the room into which it opened was a rich chamber, hung with
+gorgeous arras. I stood with an ocean of sighs frozen in my bosom. I
+could remain no longer. She was near me, and I could not see her; near
+me in the arms of one loved better than I, and I would not see her, and
+I would not be by her. But how to escape from the nearness of the best
+beloved? I had not this time forgotten the mark; for the fact that I
+could not enter the sphere of these living beings kept me aware that,
+for me, I moved in a vision, while they moved in life. I looked all
+about for the mark, but could see it nowhere; for I avoided looking
+just where it was. There the dull red cipher glowed, on the very door of
+their secret chamber. Struck with agony, I dashed it open, and fell at
+the feet of the ancient woman, who still spun on, the whole dissolved
+ocean of my sighs bursting from me in a storm of tearless sobs. Whether
+I fainted or slept, I do not know; but, as I returned to consciousness,
+before I seemed to have power to move, I heard the woman singing, and
+could distinguish the words:
+
+        O light of dead and of dying days!
+             O Love! in thy glory go,
+         In a rosy mist and a moony maze,
+             O'er the pathless peaks of snow.
+
+        But what is left for the cold gray soul,
+             That moans like a wounded dove?
+         One wine is left in the broken bowl!--
+             'Tis--TO LOVE, AND LOVE AND LOVE.
+
+ Now I could weep.  When she saw me weeping, she sang:
+
+        Better to sit at the waters' birth,
+             Than a sea of waves to win;
+         To live in the love that floweth forth,
+             Than the love that cometh in.
+
+        Be thy heart a well of love, my child,
+             Flowing, and free, and sure;
+         For a cistern of love, though undefiled,
+             Keeps not the spirit pure.
+
+I rose from the earth, loving the white lady as I had never loved her
+before.
+
+Then I walked up to the door of Dismay, and opened it, and went out. And
+lo! I came forth upon a crowded street, where men and women went to
+and fro in multitudes. I knew it well; and, turning to one hand, walked
+sadly along the pavement. Suddenly I saw approaching me, a little way
+off, a form well known to me (WELL-KNOWN!--alas, how weak the word!) in
+the years when I thought my boyhood was left behind, and shortly before
+I entered the realm of Fairy Land. Wrong and Sorrow had gone together,
+hand-in-hand as it is well they do.
+
+Unchangeably dear was that face. It lay in my heart as a child lies in
+its own white bed; but I could not meet her.
+
+"Anything but that," I said, and, turning aside, sprang up the steps
+to a door, on which I fancied I saw the mystic sign. I entered--not the
+mysterious cottage, but her home. I rushed wildly on, and stood by the
+door of her room.
+
+"She is out," I said, "I will see the old room once more."
+
+I opened the door gently, and stood in a great solemn church. A
+deep-toned bell, whose sounds throbbed and echoed and swam through the
+empty building, struck the hour of midnight. The moon shone through
+the windows of the clerestory, and enough of the ghostly radiance was
+diffused through the church to let me see, walking with a stately, yet
+somewhat trailing and stumbling step, down the opposite aisle, for I
+stood in one of the transepts, a figure dressed in a white robe, whether
+for the night, or for that longer night which lies too deep for the day,
+I could not tell. Was it she? and was this her chamber? I crossed the
+church, and followed. The figure stopped, seemed to ascend as it were
+a high bed, and lay down. I reached the place where it lay, glimmering
+white. The bed was a tomb. The light was too ghostly to see clearly, but
+I passed my hand over the face and the hands and the feet, which were
+all bare. They were cold--they were marble, but I knew them. It grew
+dark. I turned to retrace my steps, but found, ere long, that I had
+wandered into what seemed a little chapel. I groped about, seeking the
+door. Everything I touched belonged to the dead. My hands fell on the
+cold effigy of a knight who lay with his legs crossed and his sword
+broken beside him. He lay in his noble rest, and I lived on in ignoble
+strife. I felt for the left hand and a certain finger; I found there the
+ring I knew: he was one of my own ancestors. I was in the chapel over
+the burial-vault of my race. I called aloud: "If any of the dead are
+moving here, let them take pity upon me, for I, alas! am still alive;
+and let some dead woman comfort me, for I am a stranger in the land of
+the dead, and see no light." A warm kiss alighted on my lips through
+the dark. And I said, "The dead kiss well; I will not be afraid." And a
+great hand was reached out of the dark, and grasped mine for a moment,
+mightily and tenderly. I said to myself: "The veil between, though very
+dark, is very thin."
+
+Groping my way further, I stumbled over the heavy stone that covered the
+entrance of the vault: and, in stumbling, descried upon the stone the
+mark, glowing in red fire. I caught the great ring. All my effort could
+not have moved the huge slab; but it opened the door of the cottage, and
+I threw myself once more, pale and speechless, on the couch beside the
+ancient dame. She sang once more:
+
+        Thou dreamest: on a rock thou art,
+             High o'er the broken wave;
+         Thou fallest with a fearful start
+             But not into thy grave;
+         For, waking in the morning's light,
+         Thou smilest at the vanished night
+
+        So wilt thou sink, all pale and dumb,
+             Into the fainting gloom;
+         But ere the coming terrors come,
+             Thou wak'st--where is the tomb?
+         Thou wak'st--the dead ones smile above,
+         With hovering arms of sleepless love.
+
+ She paused; then sang again:
+
+        We weep for gladness, weep for grief;
+             The tears they are the same;
+         We sigh for longing, and relief;
+             The sighs have but one name,
+
+        And mingled in the dying strife,
+             Are moans that are not sad
+          The pangs of death are throbs of life,
+             Its sighs are sometimes glad.
+
+         The face is very strange and white:
+             It is Earth's only spot
+         That feebly flickers back the light
+             The living seeth not.
+
+ I fell asleep, and slept a dreamless sleep, for I know not how
+long. When I awoke, I found that my hostess had moved from where she had
+been sitting, and now sat between me and the fourth door.
+
+I guessed that her design was to prevent my entering there. I sprang
+from the couch, and darted past her to the door. I opened it at once and
+went out. All I remember is a cry of distress from the woman: "Don't go
+there, my child! Don't go there!" But I was gone.
+
+I knew nothing more; or, if I did, I had forgot it all when I awoke to
+consciousness, lying on the floor of the cottage, with my head in the
+lap of the woman, who was weeping over me, and stroking my hair with
+both hands, talking to me as a mother might talk to a sick and sleeping,
+or a dead child. As soon as I looked up and saw her, she smiled
+through her tears; smiled with withered face and young eyes, till her
+countenance was irradiated with the light of the smile. Then she bathed
+my head and face and hands in an icy cold, colourless liquid, which
+smelt a little of damp earth. Immediately I was able to sit up. She rose
+and put some food before me. When I had eaten, she said: "Listen to me,
+my child. You must leave me directly!"
+
+"Leave you!" I said. "I am so happy with you. I never was so happy in my
+life."
+
+"But you must go," she rejoined sadly. "Listen! What do you hear?"
+
+"I hear the sound as of a great throbbing of water."
+
+"Ah! you do hear it? Well, I had to go through that door--the door of
+the Timeless" (and she shuddered as she pointed to the fourth door)--"to
+find you; for if I had not gone, you would never have entered again;
+and because I went, the waters around my cottage will rise and rise,
+and flow and come, till they build a great firmament of waters over my
+dwelling. But as long as I keep my fire burning, they cannot enter.
+I have fuel enough for years; and after one year they will sink away
+again, and be just as they were before you came. I have not been buried
+for a hundred years now." And she smiled and wept.
+
+"Alas! alas!" I cried. "I have brought this evil on the best and kindest
+of friends, who has filled my heart with great gifts."
+
+"Do not think of that," she rejoined. "I can bear it very well. You will
+come back to me some day, I know. But I beg you, for my sake, my
+dear child, to do one thing. In whatever sorrow you may be, however
+inconsolable and irremediable it may appear, believe me that the old
+woman in the cottage, with the young eyes" (and she smiled), "knows
+something, though she must not always tell it, that would quite satisfy
+you about it, even in the worst moments of your distress. Now you must
+go."
+
+"But how can I go, if the waters are all about, and if the doors all
+lead into other regions and other worlds?"
+
+"This is not an island," she replied; "but is joined to the land by a
+narrow neck; and for the door, I will lead you myself through the right
+one."
+
+She took my hand, and led me through the third door; whereupon I found
+myself standing in the deep grassy turf on which I had landed from the
+little boat, but upon the opposite side of the cottage. She pointed out
+the direction I must take, to find the isthmus and escape the rising
+waters.
+
+Then putting her arms around me, she held me to her bosom; and as I
+kissed her, I felt as if I were leaving my mother for the first time,
+and could not help weeping bitterly. At length she gently pushed me
+away, and with the words, "Go, my son, and do something worth doing,"
+turned back, and, entering the cottage, closed the door behind her. I
+felt very desolate as I went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+            "Thou hadst no fame; that which thou didst like good
+         Was but thy appetite that swayed thy blood
+         For that time to the best; for as a blast
+         That through a house comes, usually doth cast
+         Things out of order, yet by chance may come
+         And blow some one thing to his proper room,
+         So did thy appetite, and not thy zeal,
+         Sway thee by chance to do some one thing well."
+                              FLETCHER'S Faithful Shepherdess.
+
+            "The noble hart that harbours vertuous thought
+         And is with childe of glorious great intent,
+         Can never rest, until it forth have brought
+         Th' eternall brood of glorie excellent."
+                              SPENSER, The Faerie Queene.
+
+I had not gone very far before I felt that the turf beneath my feet was
+soaked with the rising waters. But I reached the isthmus in safety. It
+was rocky, and so much higher than the level of the peninsula, that I
+had plenty of time to cross. I saw on each side of me the water rising
+rapidly, altogether without wind, or violent motion, or broken waves,
+but as if a slow strong fire were glowing beneath it. Ascending a steep
+acclivity, I found myself at last in an open, rocky country. After
+travelling for some hours, as nearly in a straight line as I could,
+I arrived at a lonely tower, built on the top of a little hill, which
+overlooked the whole neighbouring country. As I approached, I heard
+the clang of an anvil; and so rapid were the blows, that I despaired of
+making myself heard till a pause in the work should ensue. It was
+some minutes before a cessation took place; but when it did, I knocked
+loudly, and had not long to wait; for, a moment after, the door was
+partly opened by a noble-looking youth, half-undressed, glowing with
+heat, and begrimed with the blackness of the forge. In one hand he held
+a sword, so lately from the furnace that it yet shone with a dull fire.
+As soon as he saw me, he threw the door wide open, and standing aside,
+invited me very cordially to enter. I did so; when he shut and bolted
+the door most carefully, and then led the way inwards. He brought me
+into a rude hall, which seemed to occupy almost the whole of the ground
+floor of the little tower, and which I saw was now being used as a
+workshop. A huge fire roared on the hearth, beside which was an anvil.
+By the anvil stood, in similar undress, and in a waiting attitude,
+hammer in hand, a second youth, tall as the former, but far more
+slightly built. Reversing the usual course of perception in such
+meetings, I thought them, at first sight, very unlike; and at the second
+glance, knew that they were brothers. The former, and apparently the
+elder, was muscular and dark, with curling hair, and large hazel eyes,
+which sometimes grew wondrously soft. The second was slender and fair,
+yet with a countenance like an eagle, and an eye which, though pale
+blue, shone with an almost fierce expression. He stood erect, as if
+looking from a lofty mountain crag, over a vast plain outstretched
+below. As soon as we entered the hall, the elder turned to me, and I saw
+that a glow of satisfaction shone on both their faces. To my surprise
+and great pleasure, he addressed me thus:
+
+"Brother, will you sit by the fire and rest, till we finish this part of
+our work?"
+
+I signified my assent; and, resolved to await any disclosure they might
+be inclined to make, seated myself in silence near the hearth.
+
+The elder brother then laid the sword in the fire, covered it well over,
+and when it had attained a sufficient degree of heat, drew it out and
+laid it on the anvil, moving it carefully about, while the younger, with
+a succession of quick smart blows, appeared either to be welding it,
+or hammering one part of it to a consenting shape with the rest. Having
+finished, they laid it carefully in the fire; and, when it was very
+hot indeed, plunged it into a vessel full of some liquid, whence a blue
+flame sprang upwards, as the glowing steel entered.
+
+There they left it; and drawing two stools to the fire, sat down, one on
+each side of me.
+
+"We are very glad to see you, brother. We have been expecting you for
+some days," said the dark-haired youth.
+
+"I am proud to be called your brother," I rejoined; "and you will not
+think I refuse the name, if I desire to know why you honour me with it?"
+
+"Ah! then he does not know about it," said the younger. "We thought you
+had known of the bond betwixt us, and the work we have to do together.
+You must tell him, brother, from the first."
+
+So the elder began:
+
+"Our father is king of this country. Before we were born, three giant
+brothers had appeared in the land. No one knew exactly when, and no one
+had the least idea whence they came. They took possession of a ruined
+castle that had stood unchanged and unoccupied within the memory of any
+of the country people. The vaults of this castle had remained uninjured
+by time, and these, I presume, they made use of at first. They were
+rarely seen, and never offered the least injury to any one; so that they
+were regarded in the neighbourhood as at least perfectly harmless, if
+not rather benevolent beings. But it began to be observed, that the old
+castle had assumed somehow or other, no one knew when or how, a somewhat
+different look from what it used to have. Not only were several breaches
+in the lower part of the walls built up, but actually some of the
+battlements which yet stood, had been repaired, apparently to prevent
+them from falling into worse decay, while the more important parts were
+being restored. Of course, every one supposed the giants must have a
+hand in the work, but no one ever saw them engaged in it. The peasants
+became yet more uneasy, after one, who had concealed himself, and
+watched all night, in the neighbourhood of the castle, reported that he
+had seen, in full moonlight, the three huge giants working with might
+and main, all night long, restoring to their former position some
+massive stones, formerly steps of a grand turnpike stair, a great
+portion of which had long since fallen, along with part of the wall
+of the round tower in which it had been built. This wall they were
+completing, foot by foot, along with the stair. But the people said
+they had no just pretext for interfering: although the real reason for
+letting the giants alone was, that everybody was far too much afraid of
+them to interrupt them.
+
+"At length, with the help of a neighbouring quarry, the whole of the
+external wall of the castle was finished. And now the country folks were
+in greater fear than before. But for several years the giants remained
+very peaceful. The reason of this was afterwards supposed to be the
+fact, that they were distantly related to several good people in the
+country; for, as long as these lived, they remained quiet; but as soon
+as they were all dead the real nature of the giants broke out. Having
+completed the outside of their castle, they proceeded, by spoiling the
+country houses around them, to make a quiet luxurious provision for
+their comfort within. Affairs reached such a pass, that the news of
+their robberies came to my father's ears; but he, alas! was so crippled
+in his resources, by a war he was carrying on with a neighbouring
+prince, that he could only spare a very few men, to attempt the capture
+of their stronghold. Upon these the giants issued in the night, and slew
+every man of them. And now, grown bolder by success and impunity, they
+no longer confined their depredations to property, but began to seize
+the persons of their distinguished neighbours, knights and ladies, and
+hold them in durance, the misery of which was heightened by all
+manner of indignity, until they were redeemed by their friends, at an
+exorbitant ransom. Many knights have adventured their overthrow, but to
+their own instead; for they have all been slain, or captured, or forced
+to make a hasty retreat. To crown their enormities, if any man now
+attempts their destruction, they, immediately upon his defeat, put one
+or more of their captives to a shameful death, on a turret in sight of
+all passers-by; so that they have been much less molested of late;
+and we, although we have burned, for years, to attack these demons
+and destroy them, dared not, for the sake of their captives, risk the
+adventure, before we should have reached at least our earliest manhood.
+Now, however, we are preparing for the attempt; and the grounds of
+this preparation are these. Having only the resolution, and not the
+experience necessary for the undertaking, we went and consulted a lonely
+woman of wisdom, who lives not very far from here, in the direction of
+the quarter from which you have come. She received us most kindly, and
+gave us what seems to us the best of advice. She first inquired what
+experience we had had in arms. We told her we had been well exercised
+from our boyhood, and for some years had kept ourselves in constant
+practice, with a view to this necessity.
+
+"'But you have not actually fought for life and death?' said she.
+
+"We were forced to confess we had not.
+
+"'So much the better in some respects,' she replied. 'Now listen to me.
+Go first and work with an armourer, for as long time as you find needful
+to obtain a knowledge of his craft; which will not be long, seeing your
+hearts will be all in the work. Then go to some lonely tower, you two
+alone. Receive no visits from man or woman. There forge for yourselves
+every piece of armour that you wish to wear, or to use, in your coming
+encounter. And keep up your exercises. As, however, two of you can be no
+match for the three giants, I will find you, if I can, a third brother,
+who will take on himself the third share of the fight, and the
+preparation. Indeed, I have already seen one who will, I think, be the
+very man for your fellowship, but it will be some time before he comes
+to me. He is wandering now without an aim. I will show him to you in a
+glass, and, when he comes, you will know him at once. If he will share
+your endeavours, you must teach him all you know, and he will repay you
+well, in present song, and in future deeds.'
+
+"She opened the door of a curious old cabinet that stood in the room.
+On the inside of this door was an oval convex mirror. Looking in it for
+some time, we at length saw reflected the place where we stood, and the
+old dame seated in her chair. Our forms were not reflected. But at the
+feet of the dame lay a young man, yourself, weeping.
+
+"'Surely this youth will not serve our ends,' said I, 'for he weeps.'
+
+"The old woman smiled. 'Past tears are present strength,' said she.
+
+"'Oh!' said my brother, 'I saw you weep once over an eagle you shot.'
+
+"'That was because it was so like you, brother,' I replied; 'but indeed,
+this youth may have better cause for tears than that--I was wrong.'
+
+"'Wait a while,' said the woman; 'if I mistake not, he will make you
+weep till your tears are dry for ever. Tears are the only cure for
+weeping. And you may have need of the cure, before you go forth to fight
+the giants. You must wait for him, in your tower, till he comes.'
+
+"Now if you will join us, we will soon teach you to make your armour;
+and we will fight together, and work together, and love each other as
+never three loved before. And you will sing to us, will you not?"
+
+"That I will, when I can," I answered; "but it is only at times that the
+power of song comes upon me. For that I must wait; but I have a feeling
+that if I work well, song will not be far off to enliven the labour."
+
+This was all the compact made: the brothers required nothing more, and
+I did not think of giving anything more. I rose, and threw off my upper
+garments.
+
+"I know the uses of the sword," I said. "I am ashamed of my white hands
+beside yours so nobly soiled and hard; but that shame will soon be wiped
+away."
+
+"No, no; we will not work to-day. Rest is as needful as toil. Bring the
+wine, brother; it is your turn to serve to-day."
+
+The younger brother soon covered a table with rough viands, but good
+wine; and we ate and drank heartily, beside our work. Before the meal
+was over, I had learned all their story. Each had something in his heart
+which made the conviction, that he would victoriously perish in the
+coming conflict, a real sorrow to him. Otherwise they thought they would
+have lived enough. The causes of their trouble were respectively these:
+
+While they wrought with an armourer, in a city famed for workmanship
+in steel and silver, the elder had fallen in love with a lady as
+far beneath him in real rank, as she was above the station he had
+as apprentice to an armourer. Nor did he seek to further his suit by
+discovering himself; but there was simply so much manhood about him,
+that no one ever thought of rank when in his company. This is what his
+brother said about it. The lady could not help loving him in return. He
+told her when he left her, that he had a perilous adventure before him,
+and that when it was achieved, she would either see him return to claim
+her, or hear that he had died with honour. The younger brother's grief
+arose from the fact, that, if they were both slain, his old father, the
+king, would be childless. His love for his father was so exceeding, that
+to one unable to sympathise with it, it would have appeared extravagant.
+Both loved him equally at heart; but the love of the younger had
+been more developed, because his thoughts and anxieties had not been
+otherwise occupied. When at home, he had been his constant companion;
+and, of late, had ministered to the infirmities of his growing age. The
+youth was never weary of listening to the tales of his sire's youthful
+adventures; and had not yet in the smallest degree lost the conviction,
+that his father was the greatest man in the world. The grandest triumph
+possible to his conception was, to return to his father, laden with the
+spoils of one of the hated giants. But they both were in some dread,
+lest the thought of the loneliness of these two might occur to them,
+in the moment when decision was most necessary, and disturb, in some
+degree, the self-possession requisite for the success of their attempt.
+For, as I have said, they were yet untried in actual conflict. "Now,"
+thought I, "I see to what the powers of my gift must minister." For my
+own part, I did not dread death, for I had nothing to care to live for;
+but I dreaded the encounter because of the responsibility connected with
+it. I resolved however to work hard, and thus grow cool, and quick, and
+forceful.
+
+The time passed away in work and song, in talk and ramble, in friendly
+fight and brotherly aid. I would not forge for myself armour of heavy
+mail like theirs, for I was not so powerful as they, and depended more
+for any success I might secure, upon nimbleness of motion, certainty of
+eye, and ready response of hand. Therefore I began to make for myself a
+shirt of steel plates and rings; which work, while more troublesome,
+was better suited to me than the heavier labour. Much assistance did the
+brothers give me, even after, by their instructions, I was able to make
+some progress alone. Their work was in a moment abandoned, to render any
+required aid to mine. As the old woman had promised, I tried to repay
+them with song; and many were the tears they both shed over my ballads
+and dirges. The songs they liked best to hear were two which I made for
+them. They were not half so good as many others I knew, especially some
+I had learned from the wise woman in the cottage; but what comes nearest
+to our needs we like the best.
+
+I       The king sat on his throne
+            Glowing in gold and red;
+         The crown in his right hand shone,
+             And the gray hairs crowned his head.
+
+        His only son walks in,
+            And in walls of steel he stands:
+         Make me, O father, strong to win,
+             With the blessing of holy hands."
+
+        He knelt before his sire,
+             Who blessed him with feeble smile
+          His eyes shone out with a kingly fire,
+             But his old lips quivered the while.
+
+        "Go to the fight, my son,
+             Bring back the giant's head;
+         And the crown with which my brows have done,
+             Shall glitter on thine instead."
+
+        "My father, I seek no crowns,
+             But unspoken praise from thee;
+         For thy people's good, and thy renown,
+             I will die to set them free."
+
+        The king sat down and waited there,
+             And rose not, night nor day;
+         Till a sound of shouting filled the air,
+             And cries of a sore dismay.
+
+        Then like a king he sat once more,
+             With the crown upon his head;
+         And up to the throne the people bore
+             A mighty giant dead.
+
+        And up to the throne the people bore
+             A pale and lifeless boy.
+         The king rose up like a prophet of yore,
+             In a lofty, deathlike joy.
+
+        He put the crown on the chilly brow:
+             "Thou should'st have reigned with me
+         But Death is the king of both, and now
+             I go to obey with thee.
+
+        "Surely some good in me there lay,
+             To beget the noble one."
+         The old man smiled like a winter day,
+             And fell beside his son.
+
+II      "O lady, thy lover is dead," they cried;
+         "He is dead, but hath slain the foe;
+         He hath left his name to be magnified
+             In a song of wonder and woe."
+
+        "Alas! I am well repaid," said she,
+             "With a pain that stings like joy:
+         For I feared, from his tenderness to me,
+             That he was but a feeble boy.
+
+        "Now I shall hold my head on high,
+             The queen among my kind;
+         If ye hear a sound, 'tis only a sigh
+             For a glory left behind."
+
+The first three times I sang these songs they both wept passionately.
+But after the third time, they wept no more. Their eyes shone, and their
+faces grew pale, but they never wept at any of my songs again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+        "I put my life in my hands."--The Book of Judges.
+
+At length, with much toil and equal delight, our armour was finished.
+We armed each other, and tested the strength of the defence, with many
+blows of loving force. I was inferior in strength to both my brothers,
+but a little more agile than either; and upon this agility, joined to
+precision in hitting with the point of my weapon, I grounded my hopes of
+success in the ensuing combat. I likewise laboured to develop yet more
+the keenness of sight with which I was naturally gifted; and, from the
+remarks of my companions, I soon learned that my endeavours were not in
+vain.
+
+The morning arrived on which we had determined to make the attempt,
+and succeed or perish--perhaps both. We had resolved to fight on foot;
+knowing that the mishap of many of the knights who had made the attempt,
+had resulted from the fright of their horses at the appearance of the
+giants; and believing with Sir Gawain, that, though mare's sons might
+be false to us, the earth would never prove a traitor. But most of our
+preparations were, in their immediate aim at least, frustrated.
+
+We rose, that fatal morning, by daybreak. We had rested from all labour
+the day before, and now were fresh as the lark. We bathed in cold
+spring water, and dressed ourselves in clean garments, with a sense of
+preparation, as for a solemn festivity. When we had broken our fast,
+I took an old lyre, which I had found in the tower and had myself
+repaired, and sung for the last time the two ballads of which I have
+said so much already. I followed them with this, for a closing song:
+
+        Oh, well for him who breaks his dream
+             With the blow that ends the strife
+         And, waking, knows the peace that flows
+             Around the pain of life!
+
+        We are dead, my brothers!  Our bodies clasp,
+             As an armour, our souls about;
+         This hand is the battle-axe I grasp,
+             And this my hammer stout.
+
+        Fear not, my brothers, for we are dead;
+             No noise can break our rest;
+         The calm of the grave is about the head,
+             And the heart heaves not the breast.
+
+         And our life we throw to our people back,
+             To live with, a further store;
+         We leave it them, that there be no lack
+             In the land where we live no more.
+
+         Oh, well for him who breaks his dream
+             With the blow that ends the strife
+          And, waking, knows the peace that flows
+             Around the noise of life!
+
+ As the last few tones of the instrument were following, like a
+dirge, the death of the song, we all sprang to our feet. For, through
+one of the little windows of the tower, towards which I had looked as
+I sang, I saw, suddenly rising over the edge of the slope on which our
+tower stood, three enormous heads. The brothers knew at once, by my
+looks, what caused my sudden movement. We were utterly unarmed, and
+there was no time to arm.
+
+But we seemed to adopt the same resolution simultaneously; for each
+caught up his favourite weapon, and, leaving his defence behind, sprang
+to the door. I snatched up a long rapier, abruptly, but very finely
+pointed, in my sword-hand, and in the other a sabre; the elder brother
+seized his heavy battle-axe; and the younger, a great, two-handed sword,
+which he wielded in one hand like a feather. We had just time to get
+clear of the tower, embrace and say good-bye, and part to some little
+distance, that we might not encumber each other's motions, ere the
+triple giant-brotherhood drew near to attack us. They were about twice
+our height, and armed to the teeth. Through the visors of their helmets
+their monstrous eyes shone with a horrible ferocity. I was in the middle
+position, and the middle giant approached me. My eyes were busy with his
+armour, and I was not a moment in settling my mode of attack. I saw that
+his body-armour was somewhat clumsily made, and that the overlappings
+in the lower part had more play than necessary; and I hoped that, in
+a fortunate moment, some joint would open a little, in a visible and
+accessible part. I stood till he came near enough to aim a blow at me
+with the mace, which has been, in all ages, the favourite weapon of
+giants, when, of course, I leaped aside, and let the blow fall upon the
+spot where I had been standing. I expected this would strain the joints
+of his armour yet more. Full of fury, he made at me again; but I kept
+him busy, constantly eluding his blows, and hoping thus to fatigue him.
+He did not seem to fear any assault from me, and I attempted none as
+yet; but while I watched his motions in order to avoid his blows, I, at
+the same time, kept equal watch upon those joints of his armour, through
+some one of which I hoped to reach his life. At length, as if somewhat
+fatigued, he paused a moment, and drew himself slightly up; I bounded
+forward, foot and hand, ran my rapier right through to the armour of
+his back, let go the hilt, and passing under his right arm, turned as
+he fell, and flew at him with my sabre. At one happy blow I divided the
+band of his helmet, which fell off, and allowed me, with a second cut
+across the eyes, to blind him quite; after which I clove his head, and
+turned, uninjured, to see how my brothers had fared. Both the giants
+were down, but so were my brothers. I flew first to the one and then
+to the other couple. Both pairs of combatants were dead, and yet locked
+together, as in the death-struggle. The elder had buried his battle-axe
+in the body of his foe, and had fallen beneath him as he fell. The giant
+had strangled him in his own death-agonies. The younger had nearly hewn
+off the left leg of his enemy; and, grappled with in the act, had,
+while they rolled together on the earth, found for his dagger a passage
+betwixt the gorget and cuirass of the giant, and stabbed him mortally in
+the throat. The blood from the giant's throat was yet pouring over the
+hand of his foe, which still grasped the hilt of the dagger sheathed
+in the wound. They lay silent. I, the least worthy, remained the sole
+survivor in the lists.
+
+As I stood exhausted amidst the dead, after the first worthy deed of my
+life, I suddenly looked behind me, and there lay the Shadow, black in
+the sunshine. I went into the lonely tower, and there lay the useless
+armour of the noble youths--supine as they.
+
+Ah, how sad it looked! It was a glorious death, but it was death. My
+songs could not comfort me now. I was almost ashamed that I was alive,
+when they, the true-hearted, were no more. And yet I breathed freer to
+think that I had gone through the trial, and had not failed. And perhaps
+I may be forgiven, if some feelings of pride arose in my bosom, when I
+looked down on the mighty form that lay dead by my hand.
+
+"After all, however," I said to myself, and my heart sank, "it was only
+skill. Your giant was but a blunderer."
+
+I left the bodies of friends and foes, peaceful enough when the
+death-fight was over, and, hastening to the country below, roused the
+peasants. They came with shouting and gladness, bringing waggons to
+carry the bodies. I resolved to take the princes home to their father,
+each as he lay, in the arms of his country's foe. But first I searched
+the giants, and found the keys of their castle, to which I repaired,
+followed by a great company of the people. It was a place of wonderful
+strength. I released the prisoners, knights and ladies, all in a sad
+condition, from the cruelties and neglects of the giants. It humbled me
+to see them crowding round me with thanks, when in truth the glorious
+brothers, lying dead by their lonely tower, were those to whom the
+thanks belonged. I had but aided in carrying out the thought born
+in their brain, and uttered in visible form before ever I laid hold
+thereupon. Yet I did count myself happy to have been chosen for their
+brother in this great deed.
+
+After a few hours spent in refreshing and clothing the prisoners, we all
+commenced our journey towards the capital. This was slow at first; but,
+as the strength and spirits of the prisoners returned, it became more
+rapid; and in three days we reached the palace of the king. As we
+entered the city gates, with the huge bulks lying each on a waggon drawn
+by horses, and two of them inextricably intertwined with the dead bodies
+of their princes, the people raised a shout and then a cry, and followed
+in multitudes the solemn procession.
+
+I will not attempt to describe the behaviour of the grand old king. Joy
+and pride in his sons overcame his sorrow at their loss. On me he heaped
+every kindness that heart could devise or hand execute. He used to sit
+and question me, night after night, about everything that was in any
+way connected with them and their preparations. Our mode of life,
+and relation to each other, during the time we spent together, was a
+constant theme. He entered into the minutest details of the construction
+of the armour, even to a peculiar mode of riveting some of the plates,
+with unwearying interest. This armour I had intended to beg of the king,
+as my sole memorials of the contest; but, when I saw the delight he took
+in contemplating it, and the consolation it appeared to afford him in
+his sorrow, I could not ask for it; but, at his request, left my own,
+weapons and all, to be joined with theirs in a trophy, erected in the
+grand square of the palace. The king, with gorgeous ceremony, dubbed me
+knight with his own old hand, in which trembled the sword of his youth.
+
+During the short time I remained, my company was, naturally, much
+courted by the young nobles. I was in a constant round of gaiety and
+diversion, notwithstanding that the court was in mourning. For the
+country was so rejoiced at the death of the giants, and so many of their
+lost friends had been restored to the nobility and men of wealth, that
+the gladness surpassed the grief. "Ye have indeed left your lives to
+your people, my great brothers!" I said.
+
+But I was ever and ever haunted by the old shadow, which I had not seen
+all the time that I was at work in the tower. Even in the society of the
+ladies of the court, who seemed to think it only their duty to make
+my stay there as pleasant to me as possible, I could not help being
+conscious of its presence, although it might not be annoying me at the
+time. At length, somewhat weary of uninterrupted pleasure, and nowise
+strengthened thereby, either in body or mind, I put on a splendid suit
+of armour of steel inlaid with silver, which the old king had given
+me, and, mounting the horse on which it had been brought to me, took my
+leave of the palace, to visit the distant city in which the lady dwelt,
+whom the elder prince had loved. I anticipated a sore task, in conveying
+to her the news of his glorious fate: but this trial was spared me, in a
+manner as strange as anything that had happened to me in Fairy Land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+        "No one has my form but the I."
+          Schoppe, in JEAN PAUL'S Titan.
+
+                    "Joy's a subtil elf.
+         I think man's happiest when he forgets himself."
+                       CYRIL TOURNEUR, The Revenger's Tragedy.
+
+
+On the third day of my journey, I was riding gently along a road,
+apparently little frequented, to judge from the grass that grew upon
+it. I was approaching a forest. Everywhere in Fairy Land forests are the
+places where one may most certainly expect adventures. As I drew near, a
+youth, unarmed, gentle, and beautiful, who had just cut a branch from a
+yew growing on the skirts of the wood, evidently to make himself a bow,
+met me, and thus accosted me:
+
+"Sir knight, be careful as thou ridest through this forest; for it is
+said to be strangely enchanted, in a sort which even those who have been
+witnesses of its enchantment can hardly describe."
+
+I thanked him for his advice, which I promised to follow, and rode on.
+But the moment I entered the wood, it seemed to me that, if enchantment
+there was, it must be of a good kind; for the Shadow, which had been
+more than usually dark and distressing, since I had set out on this
+journey, suddenly disappeared. I felt a wonderful elevation of spirits,
+and began to reflect on my past life, and especially on my combat
+with the giants, with such satisfaction, that I had actually to remind
+myself, that I had only killed one of them; and that, but for the
+brothers, I should never have had the idea of attacking them, not to
+mention the smallest power of standing to it. Still I rejoiced, and
+counted myself amongst the glorious knights of old; having even the
+unspeakable presumption--my shame and self-condemnation at the memory
+of it are such, that I write it as the only and sorest penance I can
+perform--to think of myself (will the world believe it?) as side by side
+with Sir Galahad! Scarcely had the thought been born in my mind, when,
+approaching me from the left, through the trees, I espied a resplendent
+knight, of mighty size, whose armour seemed to shine of itself, without
+the sun. When he drew near, I was astonished to see that this armour was
+like my own; nay, I could trace, line for line, the correspondence of
+the inlaid silver to the device on my own. His horse, too, was like mine
+in colour, form, and motion; save that, like his rider, he was greater
+and fiercer than his counterpart. The knight rode with beaver up. As he
+halted right opposite to me in the narrow path, barring my way, I saw
+the reflection of my countenance in the centre plate of shining steel on
+his breastplate. Above it rose the same face--his face--only, as I have
+said, larger and fiercer. I was bewildered. I could not help feeling
+some admiration of him, but it was mingled with a dim conviction that he
+was evil, and that I ought to fight with him.
+
+"Let me pass," I said.
+
+"When I will," he replied.
+
+Something within me said: "Spear in rest, and ride at him! else thou art
+for ever a slave."
+
+I tried, but my arm trembled so much, that I could not couch my lance.
+To tell the truth, I, who had overcome the giant, shook like a coward
+before this knight. He gave a scornful laugh, that echoed through the
+wood, turned his horse, and said, without looking round, "Follow me."
+
+I obeyed, abashed and stupefied. How long he led, and how long I
+followed, I cannot tell. "I never knew misery before," I said to myself.
+"Would that I had at least struck him, and had had my death-blow in
+return! Why, then, do I not call to him to wheel and defend himself?
+Alas! I know not why, but I cannot. One look from him would cow me like
+a beaten hound." I followed, and was silent.
+
+At length we came to a dreary square tower, in the middle of a dense
+forest. It looked as if scarce a tree had been cut down to make room for
+it. Across the very door, diagonally, grew the stem of a tree, so large
+that there was just room to squeeze past it in order to enter. One
+miserable square hole in the roof was the only visible suggestion of a
+window. Turret or battlement, or projecting masonry of any kind, it had
+none. Clear and smooth and massy, it rose from its base, and ended with
+a line straight and unbroken. The roof, carried to a centre from each of
+the four walls, rose slightly to the point where the rafters met. Round
+the base lay several little heaps of either bits of broken branches,
+withered and peeled, or half-whitened bones; I could not distinguish
+which. As I approached, the ground sounded hollow beneath my horse's
+hoofs. The knight took a great key from his pocket, and reaching past
+the stem of the tree, with some difficulty opened the door. "Dismount,"
+he commanded. I obeyed. He turned my horse's head away from the tower,
+gave him a terrible blow with the flat side of his sword, and sent him
+madly tearing through the forest.
+
+"Now," said he, "enter, and take your companion with you."
+
+I looked round: knight and horse had vanished, and behind me lay the
+horrible shadow. I entered, for I could not help myself; and the shadow
+followed me. I had a terrible conviction that the knight and he were
+one. The door closed behind me.
+
+Now I was indeed in pitiful plight. There was literally nothing in the
+tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to the roof; in
+which, as I had seen from without, there was one little square opening.
+This I now knew to be the only window the tower possessed. I sat down on
+the floor, in listless wretchedness. I think I must have fallen asleep,
+and have slept for hours; for I suddenly became aware of existence, in
+observing that the moon was shining through the hole in the roof. As she
+rose higher and higher, her light crept down the wall over me, till at
+last it shone right upon my head. Instantaneously the walls of the tower
+seemed to vanish away like a mist. I sat beneath a beech, on the edge
+of a forest, and the open country lay, in the moonlight, for miles and
+miles around me, spotted with glimmering houses and spires and towers. I
+thought with myself, "Oh, joy! it was only a dream; the horrible narrow
+waste is gone, and I wake beneath a beech-tree, perhaps one that loves
+me, and I can go where I will." I rose, as I thought, and walked about,
+and did what I would, but ever kept near the tree; for always, and, of
+course, since my meeting with the woman of the beech-tree far more than
+ever, I loved that tree. So the night wore on. I waited for the sun to
+rise, before I could venture to renew my journey. But as soon as the
+first faint light of the dawn appeared, instead of shining upon me
+from the eye of the morning, it stole like a fainting ghost through the
+little square hole above my head; and the walls came out as the light
+grew, and the glorious night was swallowed up of the hateful day. The
+long dreary day passed. My shadow lay black on the floor. I felt no
+hunger, no need of food. The night came. The moon shone. I watched her
+light slowly descending the wall, as I might have watched, adown the
+sky, the long, swift approach of a helping angel. Her rays touched me,
+and I was free. Thus night after night passed away. I should have died
+but for this. Every night the conviction returned, that I was free.
+Every morning I sat wretchedly disconsolate. At length, when the course
+of the moon no longer permitted her beams to touch me, the night was
+dreary as the day.
+
+When I slept, I was somewhat consoled by my dreams; but all the time I
+dreamed, I knew that I was only dreaming. But one night, at length, the
+moon, a mere shred of pallor, scattered a few thin ghostly rays upon me;
+and I think I fell asleep and dreamed. I sat in an autumn night before
+the vintage, on a hill overlooking my own castle. My heart sprang with
+joy. Oh, to be a child again, innocent, fearless, without shame or
+desire! I walked down to the castle. All were in consternation at my
+absence. My sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and clung
+to me, with incoherent cries, as I entered. My old friends came flocking
+round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall. It was the
+light of the dawn shining through the square window of my tower.
+More earnestly than ever, I longed for freedom after this dream; more
+drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched day. I measured by the
+sunbeams, caught through the little window in the trap of my tower, how
+it went by, waiting only for the dreams of the night.
+
+About noon, I started as if something foreign to all my senses and all
+my experience, had suddenly invaded me; yet it was only the voice of
+a woman singing. My whole frame quivered with joy, surprise, and the
+sensation of the unforeseen. Like a living soul, like an incarnation of
+Nature, the song entered my prison-house. Each tone folded its wings,
+and laid itself, like a caressing bird, upon my heart. It bathed me like
+a sea; inwrapt me like an odorous vapour; entered my soul like a long
+draught of clear spring-water; shone upon me like essential sunlight;
+soothed me like a mother's voice and hand. Yet, as the clearest
+forest-well tastes sometimes of the bitterness of decayed leaves, so to
+my weary, prisoned heart, its cheerfulness had a sting of cold, and its
+tenderness unmanned me with the faintness of long-departed joys. I wept
+half-bitterly, half-luxuriously; but not long. I dashed away the tears,
+ashamed of a weakness which I thought I had abandoned. Ere I knew, I had
+walked to the door, and seated myself with my ears against it, in order
+to catch every syllable of the revelation from the unseen outer world.
+And now I heard each word distinctly. The singer seemed to be standing
+or sitting near the tower, for the sounds indicated no change of place.
+The song was something like this:
+
+         The sun, like a golden knot on high,
+         Gathers the glories of the sky,
+         And binds them into a shining tent,
+         Roofing the world with the firmament.
+         And through the pavilion the rich winds blow,
+         And through the pavilion the waters go.
+         And the birds for joy, and the trees for prayer,
+         Bowing their heads in the sunny air,
+         And for thoughts, the gently talking springs,
+         That come from the centre with secret things--
+         All make a music, gentle and strong,
+         Bound by the heart into one sweet song.
+         And amidst them all, the mother Earth
+         Sits with the children of her birth;
+         She tendeth them all, as a mother hen
+         Her little ones round her, twelve or ten:
+         Oft she sitteth, with hands on knee,
+         Idle with love for her family.
+         Go forth to her from the dark and the dust,
+         And weep beside her, if weep thou must;
+         If she may not hold thee to her breast,
+         Like a weary infant, that cries for rest
+         At least she will press thee to her knee,
+         And tell a low, sweet tale to thee,
+         Till the hue to thy cheeky and the light to thine eye,
+         Strength to thy limbs, and courage high
+         To thy fainting heart, return amain,
+         And away to work thou goest again.
+         From the narrow desert, O man of pride,
+         Come into the house, so high and wide.
+
+
+Hardly knowing what I did, I opened the door. Why had I not done so
+before? I do not know.
+
+At first I could see no one; but when I had forced myself past the tree
+which grew across the entrance, I saw, seated on the ground, and leaning
+against the tree, with her back to my prison, a beautiful woman. Her
+countenance seemed known to me, and yet unknown. She looked at me and
+smiled, when I made my appearance.
+
+"Ah! were you the prisoner there? I am very glad I have wiled you out."
+
+"Do you know me then?" "Do you not know me? But you hurt me, and that,
+I suppose, makes it easy for a man to forget. You broke my globe. Yet
+I thank you. Perhaps I owe you many thanks for breaking it. I took the
+pieces, all black, and wet with crying over them, to the Fairy Queen.
+There was no music and no light in them now. But she took them from me,
+and laid them aside; and made me go to sleep in a great hall of white,
+with black pillars, and many red curtains. When I woke in the morning,
+I went to her, hoping to have my globe again, whole and sound; but she
+sent me away without it, and I have not seen it since. Nor do I care for
+it now. I have something so much better. I do not need the globe to play
+to me; for I can sing. I could not sing at all before. Now I go about
+everywhere through Fairy Land, singing till my heart is like to break,
+just like my globe, for very joy at my own songs. And wherever I go, my
+songs do good, and deliver people. And now I have delivered you, and I
+am so happy."
+
+She ceased, and the tears came into her eyes.
+
+All this time, I had been gazing at her; and now fully recognised the
+face of the child, glorified in the countenance of the woman.
+
+I was ashamed and humbled before her; but a great weight was lifted
+from my thoughts. I knelt before her, and thanked her, and begged her to
+forgive me.
+
+"Rise, rise," she said; "I have nothing to forgive; I thank you. But now
+I must be gone, for I do not know how many may be waiting for me, here
+and there, through the dark forests; and they cannot come out till I
+come."
+
+She rose, and with a smile and a farewell, turned and left me. I dared
+not ask her to stay; in fact, I could hardly speak to her. Between
+her and me, there was a great gulf. She was uplifted, by sorrow and
+well-doing, into a region I could hardly hope ever to enter. I watched
+her departure, as one watches a sunset. She went like a radiance through
+the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing
+that such a creature was in it.
+
+She was bearing the sun to the unsunned spots. The light and the music
+of her broken globe were now in her heart and her brain. As she went,
+she sang; and I caught these few words of her song; and the tones seemed
+to linger and wind about the trees after she had disappeared:
+
+             Thou goest thine, and I go mine--
+             Many ways we wend;
+             Many days, and many ways,
+             Ending in one end.
+
+             Many a wrong, and its curing song;
+             Many a road, and many an inn;
+             Room to roam, but only one home
+             For all the world to win.
+ And so she vanished.  With a sad heart, soothed by humility, and
+the knowledge of her peace and gladness, I bethought me what now I
+should do. First, I must leave the tower far behind me, lest, in some
+evil moment, I might be once more caged within its horrible walls. But
+it was ill walking in my heavy armour; and besides I had now no right
+to the golden spurs and the resplendent mail, fitly dulled with long
+neglect. I might do for a squire; but I honoured knighthood too highly,
+to call myself any longer one of the noble brotherhood. I stripped off
+all my armour, piled it under the tree, just where the lady had been
+seated, and took my unknown way, eastward through the woods. Of all my
+weapons, I carried only a short axe in my hand.
+
+Then first I knew the delight of being lowly; of saying to myself, "I
+am what I am, nothing more." "I have failed," I said, "I have lost
+myself--would it had been my shadow." I looked round: the shadow was
+nowhere to be seen. Ere long, I learned that it was not myself, but
+only my shadow, that I had lost. I learned that it is better, a
+thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up
+his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will
+be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer
+of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or
+dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself
+for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas,
+formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my
+ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at
+first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading
+myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead
+man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Doubtless, this self
+must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged
+child; but of this my history as yet bears not the record.
+
+Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever
+something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from
+the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning
+with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that
+finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+        "High erected thought, seated in a heart of courtesy."
+                                SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
+
+            "A sweet attractive kinde of grace,
+                 A full assurance given by lookes,
+              Continuall comfort in a face,
+                 The lineaments of Gospel bookes."
+                           MATTHEW ROYDON, on Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+
+I had not gone far, for I had but just lost sight of the hated tower,
+when a voice of another sort, sounding near or far, as the trees
+permitted or intercepted its passage, reached me. It was a full, deep,
+manly voice, but withal clear and melodious. Now it burst on the ear
+with a sudden swell, and anon, dying away as suddenly, seemed to come to
+me across a great space. Nevertheless, it drew nearer; till, at last, I
+could distinguish the words of the song, and get transient glimpses of
+the singer, between the columns of the trees. He came nearer, dawning
+upon me like a growing thought. He was a knight, armed from head to
+heel, mounted upon a strange-looking beast, whose form I could not
+understand. The words which I heard him sing were like these:
+
+          Heart be stout,
+           And eye be true;
+          Good blade out!
+           And ill shall rue.
+
+          Courage, horse!
+           Thou lackst no skill;
+          Well thy force
+           Hath matched my will.
+
+          For the foe
+           With fiery breath,
+          At a blow,
+           Is still in death.
+
+          Gently, horse!
+           Tread fearlessly;
+         'Tis his corse
+           That burdens thee.
+
+          The sun's eye
+           Is fierce at noon;
+          Thou and I
+           Will rest full soon.
+
+          And new strength
+           New work will meet;
+          Till, at length,
+           Long rest is sweet.
+
+And now horse and rider had arrived near enough for me to see, fastened
+by the long neck to the hinder part of the saddle, and trailing its
+hideous length on the ground behind, the body of a great dragon. It was
+no wonder that, with such a drag at his heels, the horse could make
+but slow progress, notwithstanding his evident dismay. The horrid,
+serpent-like head, with its black tongue, forked with red, hanging out
+of its jaws, dangled against the horse's side. Its neck was covered with
+long blue hair, its sides with scales of green and gold. Its back was of
+corrugated skin, of a purple hue. Its belly was similar in nature, but
+its colour was leaden, dashed with blotches of livid blue. Its skinny,
+bat-like wings and its tail were of a dull gray. It was strange to see
+how so many gorgeous colours, so many curving lines, and such beautiful
+things as wings and hair and scales, combined to form the horrible
+creature, intense in ugliness.
+
+The knight was passing me with a salutation; but, as I walked towards
+him, he reined up, and I stood by his stirrup. When I came near him, I
+saw to my surprise and pleasure likewise, although a sudden pain, like
+a birth of fire, sprang up in my heart, that it was the knight of the
+soiled armour, whom I knew before, and whom I had seen in the vision,
+with the lady of the marble. But I could have thrown my arms around him,
+because she loved him. This discovery only strengthened the resolution
+I had formed, before I recognised him, of offering myself to the knight,
+to wait upon him as a squire, for he seemed to be unattended. I made
+my request in as few words as possible. He hesitated for a moment, and
+looked at me thoughtfully. I saw that he suspected who I was, but that
+he continued uncertain of his suspicion. No doubt he was soon convinced
+of its truth; but all the time I was with him, not a word crossed his
+lips with reference to what he evidently concluded I wished to leave
+unnoticed, if not to keep concealed.
+
+"Squire and knight should be friends," said he: "can you take me by the
+hand?" And he held out the great gauntleted right hand. I grasped it
+willingly and strongly. Not a word more was said. The knight gave the
+sign to his horse, which again began his slow march, and I walked beside
+and a little behind.
+
+We had not gone very far before we arrived at a little cottage; from
+which, as we drew near, a woman rushed out with the cry:
+
+"My child! my child! have you found my child?"
+
+"I have found her," replied the knight, "but she is sorely hurt. I was
+forced to leave her with the hermit, as I returned. You will find her
+there, and I think she will get better. You see I have brought you
+a present. This wretch will not hurt you again." And he undid the
+creature's neck, and flung the frightful burden down by the cottage
+door.
+
+The woman was now almost out of sight in the wood; but the husband stood
+at the door, with speechless thanks in his face.
+
+"You must bury the monster," said the knight. "If I had arrived a moment
+later, I should have been too late. But now you need not fear, for such
+a creature as this very rarely appears, in the same part, twice during a
+lifetime."
+
+"Will you not dismount and rest you, Sir Knight?" said the peasant, who
+had, by this time, recovered himself a little.
+
+"That I will, thankfully," said he; and, dismounting, he gave the reins
+to me, and told me to unbridle the horse, and lead him into the shade.
+"You need not tie him up," he added; "he will not run away."
+
+When I returned, after obeying his orders, and entered the cottage, I
+saw the knight seated, without his helmet, and talking most familiarly
+with the simple host. I stood at the open door for a moment, and, gazing
+at him, inwardly justified the white lady in preferring him to me. A
+nobler countenance I never saw. Loving-kindness beamed from every line
+of his face. It seemed as if he would repay himself for the late arduous
+combat, by indulging in all the gentleness of a womanly heart. But when
+the talk ceased for a moment, he seemed to fall into a reverie. Then the
+exquisite curves of the upper lip vanished. The lip was lengthened and
+compressed at the same moment. You could have told that, within the
+lips, the teeth were firmly closed. The whole face grew stern and
+determined, all but fierce; only the eyes burned on like a holy
+sacrifice, uplift on a granite rock.
+
+The woman entered, with her mangled child in her arms. She was pale
+as her little burden. She gazed, with a wild love and despairing
+tenderness, on the still, all but dead face, white and clear from loss
+of blood and terror.
+
+The knight rose. The light that had been confined to his eyes, now shone
+from his whole countenance. He took the little thing in his arms, and,
+with the mother's help, undressed her, and looked to her wounds. The
+tears flowed down his face as he did so. With tender hands he bound them
+up, kissed the pale cheek, and gave her back to her mother. When he went
+home, all his tale would be of the grief and joy of the parents; while
+to me, who had looked on, the gracious countenance of the armed man,
+beaming from the panoply of steel, over the seemingly dead child, while
+the powerful hands turned it and shifted it, and bound it, if possible
+even more gently than the mother's, formed the centre of the story.
+
+After we had partaken of the best they could give us, the knight took
+his leave, with a few parting instructions to the mother as to how she
+should treat the child.
+
+I brought the knight his steed, held the stirrup while he mounted, and
+then followed him through the wood. The horse, delighted to be free
+of his hideous load, bounded beneath the weight of man and armour, and
+could hardly be restrained from galloping on. But the knight made him
+time his powers to mine, and so we went on for an hour or two. Then
+the knight dismounted, and compelled me to get into the saddle, saying:
+"Knight and squire must share the labour."
+
+Holding by the stirrup, he walked along by my side, heavily clad as he
+was, with apparent ease. As we went, he led a conversation, in which I
+took what humble part my sense of my condition would permit me.
+
+"Somehow or other," said he, "notwithstanding the beauty of this country
+of Faerie, in which we are, there is much that is wrong in it. If there
+are great splendours, there are corresponding horrors; heights and
+depths; beautiful women and awful fiends; noble men and weaklings. All
+a man has to do, is to better what he can. And if he will settle it
+with himself, that even renown and success are in themselves of no great
+value, and be content to be defeated, if so be that the fault is not
+his; and so go to his work with a cool brain and a strong will, he
+will get it done; and fare none the worse in the end, that he was not
+burdened with provision and precaution."
+
+"But he will not always come off well," I ventured to say.
+
+"Perhaps not," rejoined the knight, "in the individual act; but the
+result of his lifetime will content him."
+
+"So it will fare with you, doubtless," thought I; "but for me---"
+
+Venturing to resume the conversation after a pause, I said,
+hesitatingly:
+
+"May I ask for what the little beggar-girl wanted your aid, when she
+came to your castle to find you?"
+
+He looked at me for a moment in silence, and then said--
+
+"I cannot help wondering how you know of that; but there is something
+about you quite strange enough to entitle you to the privilege of the
+country; namely, to go unquestioned. I, however, being only a man, such
+as you see me, am ready to tell you anything you like to ask me, as far
+as I can. The little beggar-girl came into the hall where I was sitting,
+and told me a very curious story, which I can only recollect very
+vaguely, it was so peculiar. What I can recall is, that she was sent to
+gather wings. As soon as she had gathered a pair of wings for herself,
+she was to fly away, she said, to the country she came from; but where
+that was, she could give no information.
+
+"She said she had to beg her wings from the butterflies and moths; and
+wherever she begged, no one refused her. But she needed a great many of
+the wings of butterflies and moths to make a pair for her; and so she
+had to wander about day after day, looking for butterflies, and night
+after night, looking for moths; and then she begged for their wings. But
+the day before, she had come into a part of the forest, she said, where
+there were multitudes of splendid butterflies flitting about, with wings
+which were just fit to make the eyes in the shoulders of hers; and she
+knew she could have as many of them as she liked for the asking; but as
+soon as she began to beg, there came a great creature right up to her,
+and threw her down, and walked over her. When she got up, she saw
+the wood was full of these beings stalking about, and seeming to have
+nothing to do with each other. As soon as ever she began to beg, one of
+them walked over her; till at last in dismay, and in growing horror of
+the senseless creatures, she had run away to look for somebody to help
+her. I asked her what they were like. She said, like great men, made of
+wood, without knee-or elbow-joints, and without any noses or mouths or
+eyes in their faces. I laughed at the little maiden, thinking she was
+making child's game of me; but, although she burst out laughing too, she
+persisted in asserting the truth of her story."
+
+"'Only come, knight, come and see; I will lead you.'
+
+"So I armed myself, to be ready for anything that might happen, and
+followed the child; for, though I could make nothing of her story, I
+could see she was a little human being in need of some help or other. As
+she walked before me, I looked attentively at her. Whether or not it was
+from being so often knocked down and walked over, I could not tell, but
+her clothes were very much torn, and in several places her white skin
+was peeping through. I thought she was hump-backed; but on looking more
+closely, I saw, through the tatters of her frock--do not laugh at me--a
+bunch on each shoulder, of the most gorgeous colours. Looking yet more
+closely, I saw that they were of the shape of folded wings, and were
+made of all kinds of butterfly-wings and moth-wings, crowded together
+like the feathers on the individual butterfly pinion; but, like them,
+most beautifully arranged, and producing a perfect harmony of colour and
+shade. I could now more easily believe the rest of her story; especially
+as I saw, every now and then, a certain heaving motion in the wings,
+as if they longed to be uplifted and outspread. But beneath her scanty
+garments complete wings could not be concealed, and indeed, from her own
+story, they were yet unfinished.
+
+"After walking for two or three hours (how the little girl found her
+way, I could not imagine), we came to a part of the forest, the very
+air of which was quivering with the motions of multitudes of resplendent
+butterflies; as gorgeous in colour, as if the eyes of peacocks' feathers
+had taken to flight, but of infinite variety of hue and form, only that
+the appearance of some kind of eye on each wing predominated. 'There
+they are, there they are!' cried the child, in a tone of victory mingled
+with terror. Except for this tone, I should have thought she referred
+to the butterflies, for I could see nothing else. But at that moment
+an enormous butterfly, whose wings had great eyes of blue surrounded by
+confused cloudy heaps of more dingy colouring, just like a break in
+the clouds on a stormy day towards evening, settled near us. The child
+instantly began murmuring: 'Butterfly, butterfly, give me your wings';
+when, the moment after, she fell to the ground, and began crying as if
+hurt. I drew my sword and heaved a great blow in the direction in
+which the child had fallen. It struck something, and instantly the most
+grotesque imitation of a man became visible. You see this Fairy Land is
+full of oddities and all sorts of incredibly ridiculous things, which a
+man is compelled to meet and treat as real existences, although all the
+time he feels foolish for doing so. This being, if being it could be
+called, was like a block of wood roughly hewn into the mere outlines
+of a man; and hardly so, for it had but head, body, legs, and arms--the
+head without a face, and the limbs utterly formless. I had hewn off one
+of its legs, but the two portions moved on as best they could, quite
+independent of each other; so that I had done no good. I ran after
+it, and clove it in twain from the head downwards; but it could not be
+convinced that its vocation was not to walk over people; for, as soon as
+the little girl began her begging again, all three parts came bustling
+up; and if I had not interposed my weight between her and them, she
+would have been trampled again under them. I saw that something else
+must be done. If the wood was full of the creatures, it would be an
+endless work to chop them so small that they could do no injury; and
+then, besides, the parts would be so numerous, that the butterflies
+would be in danger from the drift of flying chips. I served this one
+so, however; and then told the girl to beg again, and point out the
+direction in which one was coming. I was glad to find, however, that
+I could now see him myself, and wondered how they could have been
+invisible before. I would not allow him to walk over the child; but
+while I kept him off, and she began begging again, another appeared; and
+it was all I could do, from the weight of my armour, to protect her from
+the stupid, persevering efforts of the two. But suddenly the right plan
+occurred to me. I tripped one of them up, and, taking him by the legs,
+set him up on his head, with his heels against a tree. I was delighted
+to find he could not move. Meantime the poor child was walked over by
+the other, but it was for the last time. Whenever one appeared, I
+followed the same plan--tripped him up and set him on his head; and so
+the little beggar was able to gather her wings without any trouble,
+which occupation she continued for several hours in my company."
+
+"What became of her?" I asked.
+
+"I took her home with me to my castle, and she told me all her story;
+but it seemed to me, all the time, as if I were hearing a child talk in
+its sleep. I could not arrange her story in my mind at all, although it
+seemed to leave hers in some certain order of its own. My wife---"
+
+Here the knight checked himself, and said no more. Neither did I urge
+the conversation farther.
+
+Thus we journeyed for several days, resting at night in such shelter
+as we could get; and when no better was to be had, lying in the forest
+under some tree, on a couch of old leaves.
+
+I loved the knight more and more. I believe never squire served his
+master with more care and joyfulness than I. I tended his horse; I
+cleaned his armour; my skill in the craft enabled me to repair it when
+necessary; I watched his needs; and was well repaid for all by the love
+itself which I bore him.
+
+"This," I said to myself, "is a true man. I will serve him, and give him
+all worship, seeing in him the imbodiment of what I would fain become.
+If I cannot be noble myself, I will yet be servant to his nobleness."
+He, in return, soon showed me such signs of friendship and respect, as
+made my heart glad; and I felt that, after all, mine would be no lost
+life, if I might wait on him to the world's end, although no smile but
+his should greet me, and no one but him should say, "Well done! he was
+a good servant!" at last. But I burned to do something more for him than
+the ordinary routine of a squire's duty permitted.
+
+One afternoon, we began to observe an appearance of roads in the wood.
+Branches had been cut down, and openings made, where footsteps had worn
+no path below. These indications increased as we passed on, till, at
+length, we came into a long, narrow avenue, formed by felling the trees
+in its line, as the remaining roots evidenced. At some little distance,
+on both hands, we observed signs of similar avenues, which appeared to
+converge with ours, towards one spot. Along these we indistinctly saw
+several forms moving, which seemed, with ourselves, to approach the
+common centre. Our path brought us, at last, up to a wall of yew-trees,
+growing close together, and intertwining their branches so, that nothing
+could be seen beyond it. An opening was cut in it like a door, and all
+the wall was trimmed smooth and perpendicular. The knight dismounted,
+and waited till I had provided for his horse's comfort; upon which we
+entered the place together.
+
+It was a great space, bare of trees, and enclosed by four walls of yew,
+similar to that through which we had entered. These trees grew to a very
+great height, and did not divide from each other till close to the top,
+where their summits formed a row of conical battlements all around the
+walls. The space contained was a parallelogram of great length. Along
+each of the two longer sides of the interior, were ranged three ranks
+of men, in white robes, standing silent and solemn, each with a sword by
+his side, although the rest of his costume and bearing was more priestly
+than soldierly. For some distance inwards, the space between these
+opposite rows was filled with a company of men and women and children,
+in holiday attire. The looks of all were directed inwards, towards the
+further end. Far beyond the crowd, in a long avenue, seeming to narrow
+in the distance, went the long rows of the white-robed men. On what the
+attention of the multitude was fixed, we could not tell, for the sun had
+set before we arrived, and it was growing dark within. It grew darker
+and darker. The multitude waited in silence. The stars began to shine
+down into the enclosure, and they grew brighter and larger every moment.
+A wind arose, and swayed the pinnacles of the tree-tops; and made a
+strange sound, half like music, half like moaning, through the close
+branches and leaves of the tree-walls. A young girl who stood beside me,
+clothed in the same dress as the priests, bowed her head, and grew pale
+with awe.
+
+The knight whispered to me, "How solemn it is! Surely they wait to hear
+the voice of a prophet. There is something good near!"
+
+But I, though somewhat shaken by the feeling expressed by my master,
+yet had an unaccountable conviction that here was something bad. So I
+resolved to be keenly on the watch for what should follow.
+
+Suddenly a great star, like a sun, appeared high in the air over the
+temple, illuminating it throughout; and a great song arose from the men
+in white, which went rolling round and round the building, now receding
+to the end, and now approaching, down the other side, the place where we
+stood. For some of the singers were regularly ceasing, and the next
+to them as regularly taking up the song, so that it crept onwards with
+gradations produced by changes which could not themselves be detected,
+for only a few of those who were singing ceased at the same moment. The
+song paused; and I saw a company of six of the white-robed men walk up
+the centre of the human avenue, surrounding a youth gorgeously attired
+beneath his robe of white, and wearing a chaplet of flowers on his
+head. I followed them closely, with my keenest observation; and, by
+accompanying their slow progress with my eyes, I was able to perceive
+more clearly what took place when they arrived at the other end. I knew
+that my sight was so much more keen than that of most people, that I had
+good reason to suppose I should see more than the rest could, at such a
+distance. At the farther end a throne stood upon a platform, high above
+the heads of the surrounding priests. To this platform I saw the company
+begin to ascend, apparently by an inclined plane or gentle slope. The
+throne itself was elevated again, on a kind of square pedestal, to the
+top of which led a flight of steps. On the throne sat a majestic-looking
+figure, whose posture seemed to indicate a mixture of pride and
+benignity, as he looked down on the multitude below. The company
+ascended to the foot of the throne, where they all kneeled for some
+minutes; then they rose and passed round to the side of the pedestal
+upon which the throne stood. Here they crowded close behind the youth,
+putting him in the foremost place, and one of them opened a door in the
+pedestal, for the youth to enter. I was sure I saw him shrink back, and
+those crowding behind pushed him in. Then, again, arose a burst of song
+from the multitude in white, which lasted some time. When it ceased,
+a new company of seven commenced its march up the centre. As they
+advanced, I looked up at my master: his noble countenance was full of
+reverence and awe. Incapable of evil himself, he could scarcely suspect
+it in another, much less in a multitude such as this, and surrounded
+with such appearances of solemnity. I was certain it was the really
+grand accompaniments that overcame him; that the stars overhead, the
+dark towering tops of the yew-trees, and the wind that, like an unseen
+spirit, sighed through their branches, bowed his spirit to the belief,
+that in all these ceremonies lay some great mystical meaning which, his
+humility told him, his ignorance prevented him from understanding.
+
+More convinced than before, that there was evil here, I could not endure
+that my master should be deceived; that one like him, so pure and noble,
+should respect what, if my suspicions were true, was worse than the
+ordinary deceptions of priestcraft. I could not tell how far he might be
+led to countenance, and otherwise support their doings, before he should
+find cause to repent bitterly of his error. I watched the new procession
+yet more keenly, if possible, than the former. This time, the central
+figure was a girl; and, at the close, I observed, yet more indubitably,
+the shrinking back, and the crowding push. What happened to the victims,
+I never learned; but I had learned enough, and I could bear it no
+longer. I stooped, and whispered to the young girl who stood by me, to
+lend me her white garment. I wanted it, that I might not be entirely
+out of keeping with the solemnity, but might have at least this help to
+passing unquestioned. She looked up, half-amused and half-bewildered, as
+if doubting whether I was in earnest or not. But in her perplexity, she
+permitted me to unfasten it, and slip it down from her shoulders.
+
+I easily got possession of it; and, sinking down on my knees in the
+crowd, I rose apparently in the habit of one of the worshippers.
+
+Giving my battle-axe to the girl, to hold in pledge for the return of
+her stole, for I wished to test the matter unarmed, and, if it was a man
+that sat upon the throne, to attack him with hands bare, as I supposed
+his must be, I made my way through the crowd to the front, while the
+singing yet continued, desirous of reaching the platform while it was
+unoccupied by any of the priests. I was permitted to walk up the long
+avenue of white robes unmolested, though I saw questioning looks in many
+of the faces as I passed. I presume my coolness aided my passage; for
+I felt quite indifferent as to my own fate; not feeling, after the
+late events of my history, that I was at all worth taking care of; and
+enjoying, perhaps, something of an evil satisfaction, in the revenge
+I was thus taking upon the self which had fooled me so long. When I
+arrived on the platform, the song had just ceased, and I felt as if all
+were looking towards me. But instead of kneeling at its foot, I walked
+right up the stairs to the throne, laid hold of a great wooden image
+that seemed to sit upon it, and tried to hurl it from its seat. In this
+I failed at first, for I found it firmly fixed. But in dread lest, the
+first shock of amazement passing away, the guards would rush upon me
+before I had effected my purpose, I strained with all my might; and,
+with a noise as of the cracking, and breaking, and tearing of rotten
+wood, something gave way, and I hurled the image down the steps. Its
+displacement revealed a great hole in the throne, like the hollow of a
+decayed tree, going down apparently a great way. But I had no time to
+examine it, for, as I looked into it, up out of it rushed a great brute,
+like a wolf, but twice the size, and tumbled me headlong with itself,
+down the steps of the throne. As we fell, however, I caught it by the
+throat, and the moment we reached the platform, a struggle commenced, in
+which I soon got uppermost, with my hand upon its throat, and knee upon
+its heart. But now arose a wild cry of wrath and revenge and rescue.
+A universal hiss of steel, as every sword was swept from its scabbard,
+seemed to tear the very air in shreds. I heard the rush of hundreds
+towards the platform on which I knelt. I only tightened my grasp of the
+brute's throat. His eyes were already starting from his head, and his
+tongue was hanging out. My anxious hope was, that, even after they had
+killed me, they would be unable to undo my gripe of his throat, before
+the monster was past breathing. I therefore threw all my will, and
+force, and purpose, into the grasping hand. I remember no blow. A
+faintness came over me, and my consciousness departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+        "We are ne'er like angels till our passions die."
+                                       DEKKER.
+
+        "This wretched INN, where we scarce stay to bait,
+                 We call our DWELLING-PLACE:
+                 We call one STEP A RACE:
+         But angels in their full enlightened state,
+         Angels, who LIVE, and know what 'tis to BE,
+         Who all the nonsense of our language see,
+         Who speak THINGS, and our WORDS,their ill-drawn
+              PICTURES, scorn,
+            When we, by a foolish figure, say,
+            BEHOLD AN OLD MAN DEAD! then they
+         Speak properly, and cry, BEHOLD A MAN-CHILD BORN!"
+                                             COWLEY.
+
+I was dead, and right content. I lay in my coffin, with my hands folded
+in peace. The knight, and the lady I loved, wept over me.
+
+Her tears fell on my face.
+
+"Ah!" said the knight, "I rushed amongst them like a madman. I hewed
+them down like brushwood. Their swords battered on me like hail, but
+hurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He was dead. But he had
+throttled the monster, and I had to cut the handful out of its throat,
+before I could disengage and carry off his body. They dared not molest
+me as I brought him back."
+
+"He has died well," said the lady.
+
+My spirit rejoiced. They left me to my repose. I felt as if a cool hand
+had been laid upon my heart, and had stilled it. My soul was like a
+summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet
+glistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and the
+wind of the twilight has begun to blow. The hot fever of life had gone
+by, and I breathed the clear mountain-air of the land of Death. I had
+never dreamed of such blessedness. It was not that I had in any way
+ceased to be what I had been. The very fact that anything can die,
+implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must either
+take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and
+arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue to
+lead a purely spiritual life. If my passions were dead, the souls of
+the passions, those essential mysteries of the spirit which had imbodied
+themselves in the passions, and had given to them all their glory and
+wonderment, yet lived, yet glowed, with a pure, undying fire. They rose
+above their vanishing earthly garments, and disclosed themselves angels
+of light. But oh, how beautiful beyond the old form! I lay thus for
+a time, and lived as it were an unradiating existence; my soul a
+motionless lake, that received all things and gave nothing back;
+satisfied in still contemplation, and spiritual consciousness.
+
+Ere long, they bore me to my grave. Never tired child lay down in his
+white bed, and heard the sound of his playthings being laid aside for
+the night, with a more luxurious satisfaction of repose than I knew,
+when I felt the coffin settle on the firm earth, and heard the sound of
+the falling mould upon its lid. It has not the same hollow rattle within
+the coffin, that it sends up to the edge of the grave. They buried me
+in no graveyard. They loved me too much for that, I thank them; but they
+laid me in the grounds of their own castle, amid many trees; where, as
+it was spring-time, were growing primroses, and blue-bells, and all the
+families of the woods
+
+Now that I lay in her bosom, the whole earth, and each of her many
+births, was as a body to me, at my will. I seemed to feel the great
+heart of the mother beating into mine, and feeding me with her own life,
+her own essential being and nature. I heard the footsteps of my friends
+above, and they sent a thrill through my heart. I knew that the helpers
+had gone, and that the knight and the lady remained, and spoke low,
+gentle, tearful words of him who lay beneath the yet wounded sod. I rose
+into a single large primrose that grew by the edge of the grave,
+and from the window of its humble, trusting face, looked full in the
+countenance of the lady. I felt that I could manifest myself in the
+primrose; that it said a part of what I wanted to say; just as in the
+old time, I had used to betake myself to a song for the same end. The
+flower caught her eye. She stooped and plucked it, saying, "Oh, you
+beautiful creature!" and, lightly kissing it, put it in her bosom. It
+was the first kiss she had ever given me. But the flower soon began to
+wither, and I forsook it.
+
+It was evening. The sun was below the horizon; but his rosy beams yet
+illuminated a feathery cloud, that floated high above the world. I
+arose, I reached the cloud; and, throwing myself upon it, floated with
+it in sight of the sinking sun. He sank, and the cloud grew gray; but
+the grayness touched not my heart. It carried its rose-hue within;
+for now I could love without needing to be loved again. The moon came
+gliding up with all the past in her wan face. She changed my couch into
+a ghostly pallor, and threw all the earth below as to the bottom of a
+pale sea of dreams. But she could not make me sad. I knew now, that it
+is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul
+of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other,
+and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and
+assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth,
+power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing
+him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good;
+for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the
+power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet
+with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in
+the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the
+realms of lofty Death. "Ah! my friends," thought I, "how I will tend
+you, and wait upon you, and haunt you with my love."
+
+"My floating chariot bore me over a great city. Its faint dull sound
+steamed up into the air--a sound--how composed?" How many hopeless
+cries," thought I, "and how many mad shouts go to make up the tumult,
+here so faint where I float in eternal peace, knowing that they will
+one day be stilled in the surrounding calm, and that despair dies into
+infinite hope, and the seeming impossible there, is the law here!
+
+"But, O pale-faced women, and gloomy-browed men, and forgotten children,
+how I will wait on you, and minister to you, and, putting my arms about
+you in the dark, think hope into your hearts, when you fancy no one is
+near! Soon as my senses have all come back, and have grown accustomed to
+this new blessed life, I will be among you with the love that healeth."
+
+With this, a pang and a terrible shudder went through me; a writhing
+as of death convulsed me; and I became once again conscious of a more
+limited, even a bodily and earthly life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+        "Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one,
+          and perhaps will."--NOVALIS.
+
+            "And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
+            I knocke with my staf; erlich and late,
+            And say to hire, Leve mother, let me in."
+                       CHAUCER, The Pardoneres Tale.
+
+Sinking from such a state of ideal bliss, into the world of shadows
+which again closed around and infolded me, my first dread was, not
+unnaturally, that my own shadow had found me again, and that my torture
+had commenced anew. It was a sad revulsion of feeling. This, indeed,
+seemed to correspond to what we think death is, before we die. Yet I
+felt within me a power of calm endurance to which I had hitherto been
+a stranger. For, in truth, that I should be able if only to think such
+things as I had been thinking, was an unspeakable delight. An hour of
+such peace made the turmoil of a lifetime worth striving through.
+
+I found myself lying in the open air, in the early morning, before
+sunrise. Over me rose the summer heaven, expectant of the sun. The
+clouds already saw him, coming from afar; and soon every dewdrop would
+rejoice in his individual presence within it.
+
+I lay motionless for a few minutes; and then slowly rose and looked
+about me. I was on the summit of a little hill; a valley lay beneath,
+and a range of mountains closed up the view upon that side. But, to my
+horror, across the valley, and up the height of the opposing mountains,
+stretched, from my very feet, a hugely expanding shade. There it lay,
+long and large, dark and mighty. I turned away with a sick despair; when
+lo! I beheld the sun just lifting his head above the eastern hill,
+and the shadow that fell from me, lay only where his beams fell not. I
+danced for joy. It was only the natural shadow, that goes with every man
+who walks in the sun. As he arose, higher and higher, the shadow-head
+sank down the side of the opposite hill, and crept in across the valley
+towards my feet.
+
+Now that I was so joyously delivered from this fear, I saw and
+recognised the country around me. In the valley below, lay my own
+castle, and the haunts of my childhood were all about me hastened home.
+My sisters received me with unspeakable joy; but I suppose they observed
+some change in me, for a kind of respect, with a slight touch of awe in
+it, mingled with their joy, and made me ashamed. They had been in great
+distress about me. On the morning of my disappearance, they had found
+the floor of my room flooded; and, all that day, a wondrous and nearly
+impervious mist had hung about the castle and grounds. I had been gone,
+they told me, twenty-one days. To me it seemed twenty-one years. Nor
+could I yet feel quite secure in my new experiences. When, at night, I
+lay down once more in my own bed, I did not feel at all sure that when I
+awoke, I should not find myself in some mysterious region of Fairy Land.
+My dreams were incessant and perturbed; but when I did awake, I saw
+clearly that I was in my own home.
+
+My mind soon grew calm; and I began the duties of my new position,
+somewhat instructed, I hoped, by the adventures that had befallen me in
+Fairy Land. Could I translate the experience of my travels there, into
+common life? This was the question. Or must I live it all over again,
+and learn it all over again, in the other forms that belong to the world
+of men, whose experience yet runs parallel to that of Fairy Land? These
+questions I cannot answer yet. But I fear.
+
+Even yet, I find myself looking round sometimes with anxiety, to see
+whether my shadow falls right away from the sun or no. I have never yet
+discovered any inclination to either side. And if I am not unfrequently
+sad, I yet cast no more of a shade on the earth, than most men who have
+lived in it as long as I. I have a strange feeling sometimes, that I am
+a ghost, sent into the world to minister to my fellow men, or, rather,
+to repair the wrongs I have already done.
+
+May the world be brighter for me, at least in those portions of it,
+where my darkness falls not.
+
+Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had
+lost my Shadow.
+
+When the thought of the blessedness I experienced, after my death in
+Fairy Land, is too high for me to lay hold upon it and hope in it,
+I often think of the wise woman in the cottage, and of her solemn
+assurance that she knew something too good to be told. When I am
+oppressed by any sorrow or real perplexity, I often feel as if I had
+only left her cottage for a time, and would soon return out of the
+vision, into it again. Sometimes, on such occasions, I find myself,
+unconsciously almost, looking about for the mystic mark of red, with
+the vague hope of entering her door, and being comforted by her wise
+tenderness. I then console myself by saying: "I have come through the
+door of Dismay; and the way back from the world into which that has led
+me, is through my tomb. Upon that the red sign lies, and I shall find it
+one day, and be glad."
+
+I will end my story with the relation of an incident which befell me a
+few days ago. I had been with my reapers, and, when they ceased their
+work at noon, I had lain down under the shadow of a great, ancient
+beech-tree, that stood on the edge of the field. As I lay, with my eyes
+closed, I began to listen to the sound of the leaves overhead. At first,
+they made sweet inarticulate music alone; but, by-and-by, the sound
+seemed to begin to take shape, and to be gradually moulding itself into
+words; till, at last, I seemed able to distinguish these, half-dissolved
+in a little ocean of circumfluent tones: "A great good is coming--is
+coming--is coming to thee, Anodos;" and so over and over again. I
+fancied that the sound reminded me of the voice of the ancient woman, in
+the cottage that was four-square. I opened my eyes, and, for a moment,
+almost believed that I saw her face, with its many wrinkles and its
+young eyes, looking at me from between two hoary branches of the beech
+overhead. But when I looked more keenly, I saw only twigs and leaves,
+and the infinite sky, in tiny spots, gazing through between. Yet I know
+that good is coming to me--that good is always coming; though few have
+at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we
+call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his
+condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And so,
+FAREWELL.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Phantastes, by George MacDonald
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