Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
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.