Part 44

And I walked without aim through woods, through valleys, and over brooks, and through sleeping villages, to enjoy the great Night like a Day. I walked, and still looked like the magnet, to the region of midnight, to strengthen my heart at the gleaming twilight, at this upstretching Aurora of a morning beneath our feet. White night-butterflies flitted, white blossoms fluttered, white stars fell, and the white snow-powder hung silvery in the high Shadow of the Earth, which reaches beyond the Moon, and which is our Night. Then began the Eolian Harp of the Creation to tremble and to sound, blown on from above, and my immortal soul was a string in this Harp.--The heart of a brother everlasting Man swelled under the everlasting Heaven, as the seas swell under the Sun and under the Moon.--The distant village-clocks struck midnight, mingling, as it were, with the ever-pealing tone of ancient Eternity.--The limbs of my buried ones touched cold on my soul, and drove away its blots, as dead hands heal eruptions of the skin.--I walked silently through little hamlets, and close by their outer churchyards, where crumbled upcast coffin-boards were glimmering, while the once bright eyes that had laid in them were mouldered into gray ashes.--Cold thought! clutch not like a cold spectre at my heart: I look up to the starry sky, and an everlasting chain stretches thither, and over and below; and all is Life, and Warmth, and Light, and all is godlike or God....

Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of my dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave; I returned to the Earth; and in thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great Midnight, it struck half-past two; about this hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and the Moon rose in the east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of Spring: "Ah retire, bloody War, like red Mars; and thou, still Peace, come forth like the mild divided Moon!"--

THE END.

Transcriber's Notes

Footnotes in (Schmelzle's Journey to Flaetz) are numbered as in the original. They are placed at the end of the paragraph, so as not to split the paragraph. None of these footnotes seem to link directly to the text. This is explained by the author in the introduction.

The following hyphenated words are used interchangeably with its non-hyphenated form:

bed-chamber bed-clothes bed-room bed-side block-head break-neck class-room corn-fields day-light dew-drops down-pressed down-stairs good-will hand-writing hind-head Litteratur-zeitung love-sick mid-day re-awakened Ring-dove school-man tear-drops to-night train-bearer up-stairs water-spouts week-day wood-cutter

Page 59

'the keeper had lost its tract,' may be 'the keeper had lost its track,'. Unchanged.

Page 208

'her blue eye gleamed' may be 'her blue eyes gleamed'. Unchanged.

Page 376

'sheep-smearer' may be 'sheep-shearer'. Unchanged.

Page 408

'without the clam of the grave,' may be 'without the calm of the grave,'. Unchanged.