Chapter 5

"No, no, my friend," said she, "why call it past? I told the Hofrath, when he gave me the last reason for your sudden departure, that I understood neither him nor you. I am a poor sick, forsaken being, and my earthly existence is only a slow death. Now if Heaven sends me a few souls who understand me, or love me, as the Hofrath calls it, why then should it disturb their joy or mine? I had been reading my favorite poet, the old Wordsworth, when the Hofrath made his acknowledgment, and I said: 'My dear Hofrath, we have so many thoughts and so few words that we must express many thoughts in every word. Now if one who does not know us understood that our young friend loved me, or I him, in such manner as we suppose Romeo loved Juliet and Juliet Romeo, you would be entirely right in saying it should not be so. But is it not true that you love me also, my old Hofrath, and that I love you, and have loved you for many years? And has it not sometimes occurred to you that I have neither been past remedy nor unhappy on that account? Yes, my dear Hofrath, I will tell you still more--I believe you have an unfortunate love for me, and are jealous of our young friend. Do you not come every morning and inquire how I am, even when you know I am very well? Do you not bring me the finest flowers from your garden? Did you not oblige me to send you my portrait, and--perhaps I ought not to disclose it--did you not come to my room last Sunday and think I was asleep? I was really sleeping--at least I could not stir myself. I saw you sitting at my bedside for a long time, your eyes steadfastly fixed upon me, and I felt your glances playing upon my face like sunbeams. At last your eyes grew weary, and I perceived the great tears falling from them. You held your face in your hands, and loudly sobbed: Marie, Marie! Ah, my dear Hofrath, our young friend has never done that, and yet you have sent him away.' As I thus talked with him, half in jest and half in earnest, as I always speak, I perceived that I had hurt the old man's feelings. He became perfectly silent, and blushed like a child. Then I took the volume of Wordsworth's poems which I had been reading, and said: 'Here is another old man whom I love, and love with my whole heart, who understands me, and whom I understand, and yet I have never seen him, and shall never see him on earth, since it is so to be. Now I will read you one of his poems, that you may see how one can love, and that love is a silent benediction which the lover lays upon the head of the beloved, and then goes on his way in rapturous sorrow.' Then I read to him Wordsworth's 'Highland Girl;' and now, my friend, place the lamp nearer, and read the poem to me, for it refreshes me every time I hear it. A spirit breathes through it like the silent, everlasting evening-red, which stretches its arms in love and blessing over the pure breast of the snow-covered mountains."

As her words thus gradually and peacefully filled my soul, it at last grew still and solemn in my breast again; the storm was over, and her image floated like the silvery moonlight upon the gently rippling waves of my love--this world-sea which rolls through the hearts of all men, and which each calls his own while it is an all-animating pulse-beat of the whole human race. I would most gladly have kept silent like Nature as it lay before our view without, and ever grew stiller and darker: But she gave me the book, and I read:

Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower Of beauty is thy earthly dower! Twice seven consenting years have shed Their utmost bounty on thy head: And these gray rocks, that household lawn, Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn, This fall of water that doth make A murmur near the silent lake, This little bay; a quiet road That holds in shelter thy abode-- In truth, together do ye seem Like something fashioned in a dream; Such forms as from their covert peep When earthly cares are laid asleep! But, O fair creature! in the light Of common day, so heavenly bright, I bless thee, vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart; God shield thee to thy latest years! Thee neither know I, nor thy peers; And yet my eyes are filled with tears.

With earnest feeling I shall pray For thee when I am far away; For never saw I mien or face, In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scattered, like a random seed, Remote from men, thou dost not need The embarrassed look of shy distress, And maidenly shamefacedness: Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a mountaineer: A face with gladness overspread! Soft smiles, by human kindness bred! And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick and eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech: A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife That gives thy gestures grace and life! So have I, not unmoved in mind, Seen birds of tempest-loving kind-- Thus beating up against the wind.

What hand but would a garland cull For thee who art so beautiful? O happy pleasure! here to dwell Beside thee in some heathy dell; Adopt your homely ways and dress, A shepherd, thou a shepherdess: But I could frame a wish for thee More like a grave reality: Thou art to me but as a wave Of the wild sea; and I would have Some claim upon thee, if I could, Though but of common neighborhood What joy to hear thee, and to see! Thy elder brother I would be, Thy father--anything to thee!

Now thanks to heaven! that of its grace Hath led me to this lonely place. Joy have I had; and going hence I bear away my recompense. In spots like these it is we prize Our memory, feel that she hath eyes: Then why should I be loth to stir? I feel this place was made for her; To give new pleasure like the past, Continued long as life shall last. Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart, Sweet Highland Girl, from thee to part; For I, methinks, till I grow old, As fair before me shall behold, As I do now, the cabin small, The lake, the bay, the waterfall, And thee, the spirit of them all!

I had finished, and the poem had been to me like a draught of the fresh spring-water which I had sipped so often of late as it dropped from the cup of some large green leaf.

Then I heard her gentle voice, like the first tone of the organ, which wakens us from our dreamy devotion, and she said:

"Thus I desire you to love me, and thus the old Hofrath loves me, and thus in one way or another we should all love and believe in each other. But the world, although I scarcely know it, does not seem to understand this love and faith, and, on this earth, where we could have lived so happily, men have made existence very wretched.

"It must have been otherwise of old, else how could Homer have created the lovely, wholesome, tender picture of Nausikaa? Nausikaa loves Ulysses at the first glance. She says at once to her female friends: 'Oh, that I could call such a man my spouse, and that it were his destiny to remain here.' She was even too modest to appear in public at the same time with him, and she says, in his presence, that if she should bring such a handsome and majestic stranger home, the people would say, she may have taken him for a husband. How simple and natural all this is! But when she heard that he was going home to his wife and children, no murmur escaped her. She disappears from our sight, and we feel that she carried the picture of the handsome and majestic stranger a long time afterward in her breast, with silent and joyful admiration. Why do not our poets know this love--this joyful acknowledgment, this calm abnegation? A later poet would have made a womanish Werter out of Nausikaa, for the reason that love with us is nothing more than the prelude to the comedy, or the tragedy, of marriage. Is it true there is no longer any other love? Has the fountain of this pure happiness wholly dried up? Are men only acquainted with the intoxicating draught, and no longer with the invigorating well-spring of love?"

At these words the English poet occurred to me, who also thus complains:

From heaven if this belief be sent, If such be nature's holy plan, Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man.

"Yet, how happy the poets are," said she. "Their words call the deepest feelings into existence in thousands of mute souls, and how often their songs have become a confession of the sweetest secrets! Their heart beats in the breasts of the poor and the rich. The happy sing with them, and the sad weep with them. But I cannot feel any poet so completely my own as Wordsworth. I know many of my friends do not like him. They say he is not a poet. But that is exactly why I like him; he avoids all the hackneyed poetical catch-words, all exaggeration, and everything comprehended in Pegasus-flights. He is true--and does not everything lie in this one word? He opens our eyes to the beauty which lies under our feet like the daisy in the meadow. He calls everything by its true name. He never intends to startle, deceive, or dazzle any one. He seeks no admiration for himself. He only shows mankind how beautiful everything is which man's hand has not yet spoiled or broken. Is not a dew-drop on a blade of grass more beautiful than a pearl set in gold? Is not a living spring, which gushes up before us, we know not whence, more beautiful than all the fountains of Versailles? Is not his Highland Girl a lovelier and truer expression of real beauty than Goethe's Helena, or Byron's Haidee? And then the plainness of his language, and the purity of his thoughts! Is it not a pity that we have never had such a poet? Schiller could have been our Wordsworth, had he had more faith in himself than in the old Greeks and Romans. Our Ruckert would come the nearest to him, had he not also sought consolation and home under Eastern roses, away from his poor Fatherland. Few poets have the courage to be just what they are. Wordsworth had it; and as we gladly listen to great men, even in those moments when they are not inspired, but, like other mortals, quietly cherish their thoughts, and patiently wait the moment that will disclose new glimpses into the infinite, so have I also listened gladly to Wordsworth himself, in his poems, which contain nothing more than any one might have said. The greatest poets allow themselves rest. In Homer we often read a hundred verses without a single beauty, and just so in Dante; while Pindar, whom all admire so much, drives me to distraction with his ecstacies. What would I not give to spend one summer on the lakes; visit with Wordsworth all the places to which he has given names; greet all the trees which he has saved from the axe; and only once watch a far-off sunset with him, which he describes as only Turner could have painted."

It was a peculiarity of hers that her voice never dropped at the close of her talk, as with most people; on the contrary, it rose and always ended, as it were, in the broken seventh chord. She always talked up, never down, to people. The melody of her sentences resembled that of the child when it says: "Can't I, father?" There was something beseeching in her tones, and it was well-nigh impossible to gainsay her.

"Wordsworth," said I, "is a dear poet, and a still dearer man to me, and as one often has a more beautiful, wide-spread, and stirring outlook from a little hill which he ascends without effort, than when he has clambered up Mont Blanc with difficulty and weariness, so it seems to me with Wordsworth's poetry. At first, he often appeared commonplace to me, and I have frequently laid down his poems unable to understand how the best minds of England to-day can cherish such an admiration for him. The conviction has grown upon me that no poet whom his nation, or the intellectual aristocracy of his people, recognize as a poet, should remain unenjoyed by us, whatever his language. Admiration is an art which we must learn. Many Germans say Racine does not please them. The Englishman says, 'I do not understand Goethe.' The Frenchman says Shakespeare is a boor. What does all this amount to? Nothing more than the child who says it likes a waltz better than a symphony of Beethoven's. The art consists in discovering and understanding what each nation admires in its great men. He who seeks beauty will eventually find it, and discover that the Persians are not entirely deceived in their Hafiz, nor the Hindoos in their Kalidasa. We cannot understand a great man all at once. It takes strength, effort, and perseverance, and it is singular that what pleases us at first sight seldom captivates us any length of time.

"And yet," she continued, "there is something common to all great poets, to all true artists, to all the world's heroes, be they Persian or Hindoo, heathen or Christian, Roman or German; it is--I hardly know what to call it--it is the Infinite which seems to lie behind them, a far away glance into the Eternal, an apotheosis of the most trifling and transitory things. Goethe, the grand heathen, knew the sweet peace which comes from Heaven; and when he sings:

"On every mountain-height Is rest. O'er each summit white Thou feelest Scarcely a breath. The bird songs are still from each bough; Only wait, soon shalt thou Rest too, in death.

"does not an endless distance, a repose which earth cannot give, disclose itself to him above the fir-clad summits? This background is never wanting with Wordsworth. Let the carpers say what they will, it is nevertheless only the super-earthly, be it ever so obscure, which charms and quiets the human heart. Who has better understood this earthly beauty than Michel Angelo?--but he understood it, because it was to him a reflection of superearthly beauty. You know his sonnet:

["La forza d'un bel volto al ciel mi sprona (Ch'altro in terra non e che mi diletti), E vivo ascendo tra gli spirti eletti; Grazia ch'ad uom mortal raro si dona. Si ben col suo Fattor l'opra consuona, Ch'a lui mi levo per divin concetti; E quivi informo i pensier tutti e i detti; Ardendo, amando per gentil persona. Onde, se mai da due begli occhi il guardo Torcer non so, conosco in lor la luce Che mi mostra la via, ch'a Dio mi guide; E se nel lume loro acceso io ardo, Nel nobil foco mio dolce riluce La gioja che nel cielo eterna ride."]

"The might of one fair face sublimes my love, For it hath weaned my heart from low desires; Nor death I heed nor purgatorial fires. Thy beauty, antepast of joys above Instructs me in the bliss that saints approve; For, Oh! how good, how beautiful must be The God that made so good a thing as thee, So fair an image of the Heavenly Dove. Forgive me if I cannot turn away From those sweet eyes that are my earthly heaven, For they are guiding stars, benignly given To tempt my footsteps to the upward way; And if I dwell too fondly in thy sight, I live and love in God's peculiar light."

She was exhausted and silent, and how could I disturb that silence? When human hearts, after friendly interchange of thoughts feel calmed and quieted, it is as if an angel had flown through the room and we heard the gentle flutter of wings over our heads. As my gaze rested upon her, her lovely form seemed illuminated in the twilight of the summer evening, and her hand, which I held in mine, alone gave me the consciousness of her real presence. Then suddenly a bright refulgence spread over her countenance. She felt it, opened her eyes and looked upon me wonderingly. The wonderful brightness of her eyes, which the half-closed eyelids covered as with a veil, shone like the lightning. I looked around and at last saw that the moon had arisen in full splendor between two peaks opposite the castle, and brightened the lake and the village with its friendly smiles. Never had I seen Nature, never had I seen her dear face so beautiful, never had such holy rest settled down upon my soul. "Marie," said I, "in this resplendent moment, let me, just as I am, confess my whole love. Let us, while we feel so powerfully the nearness of the superearthly, unite our souls in a tie which can never again be broken. Whatever love may be, Marie, I love you and I feel, Marie, you are mine for I am thine."

I knelt before her, but ventured not to look into her eyes. My lips touched her hand and I kissed it. At this she withdrew her hand from me, slowly at first and then quickly and decidedly, and as I looked at her an expression of pain was on her face. She was silent for a time, but at last she raised herself and said with a deep sigh:

"Enough for to-day. You have caused me pain, but it is my fault. Close the window. I feel a cold chill coming over me as if a strange hand were touching me. Stay with me--but no, you must go. Farewell! Sleep well! Pray that the peace of God may abide with us. We see each other again--shall we not? To-morrow evening I await you."

Oh, where all at once had this heavenly rest flown? I saw how she suffered, and all that, I could do was to quickly hurry away, summon the English lady and then go alone in the darkness of night to the village. Long time I wandered back and forth about the lake, long my gaze strayed to the lighted window where I had just been. Finally, the last light in the castle was extinguished. The moon mounted higher and higher, and every pinnacle and projection and decoration on the lofty walls grew visible in the fairy-like illumination. Here was I all alone in the silent night. It seemed to me my brain had refused its office, for no thought came to an end and I only felt I was alone on this earth, that it contained no soul for me. The earth was like a coffin, the black sky a funeral pall, and I scarcely knew whether I was living or had long been dead. Then I suddenly looked up to the stars with their blinking eyes, which went their way so quietly--and it seemed to me that they were only for the lighting and consolation of men, and then I thought of two heavenly stars which had risen in my dark heaven so unexpectedly, and a thanksgiving rang through my breast--a thanksgiving for the love of my angel.

LAST MEMORY.

The sun was already looking into my window over the mountains when I awoke. Was it the same sun which looked upon us the evening before with lingering gaze, like a departing friend, as if it would bless the union of our souls, and which set like a lost hope? It shone upon me now, like a child which bursts into our room with beaming glance to wish us good morning on a joyful holiday. And was I the same man who, only a few hours before, had thrown himself upon his bed, broken in body and spirit? Immediately I felt once more the old life-courage and trust in God and myself, which quickened and animated my soul like the fresh morning, breeze. What would become of man without sleep? We know not where this nightly messenger leads us; and when he closes our eyes at night who can assure us that he will open them again in the morning--that he will bring us to ourselves? It required courage and faith for the first man to throw himself into the arms of this unknown friend; and were there not in our nature a certain helplessness which forces us to submission, and compels us to have faith in all things we are to believe, I doubt whether any man, notwithstanding all his weariness, could close his eyes of his own free will and enter into this unknown dream-land. The very consciousness of our weakness and our weariness gives us faith in a higher power, and courage to resign ourselves to the beautiful system of the All, and we feel invigorated and refreshed when, in waking or in sleeping, we have loosened, even for a short time only, the chains which bind our Eternal Self to our temporal Ego.

What had appeared to me, only yesterday, dark as an evening cloud flying overhead, became instantly clear. We belonged to one another, that I felt; be it as brother and sister, father and child, bridegroom and bride, we must remain together now and forever. It only concerned us to find the right name for that which we in our stammering speech call Love.

"Thy elder brother I would be, Thy father--anything to thee."

It was this "anything" for which a name must be found, for the world now recognizes nothing as nameless. She had told me herself that she loved me with that pure all-human love, out of which springs all other love. Her shuddering, her uneasiness, when I confessed my full love to her, were still incomprehensible to me, but it could no longer shatter my faith in our love. Why should we desire to understand all that takes place in other human natures, when there is so much that is incomprehensible in our own? After all, it is the inconceivable which generally captivates us, whether in nature, in man, or in our own breasts. Men whom we understand, whose motives we see before us like an anatomical preparation, leave us cold, like the characters in most of our novels. Nothing spoils our delight in life and men more than this ethic rationalism which insists upon clearing up everything, and illuminating every mystery of our inner being. There is in every person a something that is inseparable--we call it fate, the suggestive power or character--and he knows neither himself nor mankind, who believes that he can analyze the deeds and actions of men without taking into account this ever-recurring principle. Thus I consoled myself on all those points which had troubled me in the evening; and at last no streak of cloud obscured the heaven of the future.

In this frame of mind I stepped out of the close house into the open air, when a messenger brought a letter for me. It was from the Countess, as I saw by the beautiful, delicate handwriting. I breathlessly opened it--I looked for the most blissful tidings man can expect. But all my hopes were immediately shattered. The letter contained only a request not to visit her to-day, as she expected a visit at the castle from the Court Residence. No friendly word--no news of her health--only at the close, a postscript: "The Hofrath will be here to-morrow and the next day."