Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
“In still rest, in changeless simplicity, I bear,
uninterrupted, the consciousness of the whole of Humanity within me.”
SCHLEIERMACHER, _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