Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
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