Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
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_.