บทที่ บทที่ 24 · Chapter XXIV

. Chapter XXIV

“We are ne’er like angels till our passions die.”

DECKAR.

“This wretched _Inn_, where we scarce stay to bait,

We call our _Dwelling-Place_:

We call one _Step a Race_:

But angels in their full enlightened state,

Angels, who _Live_, and know what ‘tis to _Be_,

Who all the nonsense of our language see,

Who speak _things_, and our _words_, their ill-drawn _pictures_, scorn,

When we, by a foolish figure, say,

_Behold an old man dead!_ then they

Speak properly, and cry, _Behold a man-child born!_”

COWLEY.

I was dead, and right content. I lay in my coffin, with my hands folded

in peace. The knight, and the lady I loved, wept over me.

Her tears fell on my face.

“Ah!” said the knight, “I rushed amongst them like a madman. I hewed

them down like brushwood. Their swords battered on me like hail, but

hurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He was dead. But he had

throttled the monster, and I had to cut the handful out of its throat,

before I could disengage and carry off his body. They dared not molest

me as I brought him back.”

“He has died well,” said the lady.

My spirit rejoiced. They left me to my repose. I felt as if a cool hand

had been laid upon my heart, and had stilled it. My soul was like a

summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet

glistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and the

wind of the twilight has begun to blow. The hot fever of life had gone

by, and I breathed the clear mountain-air of the land of Death. I had

never dreamed of such blessedness. It was not that I had in any way

ceased to be what I had been. The very fact that anything can die,

implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must either

take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and

arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue to

lead a purely spiritual life. If my passions were dead, the souls of

the passions, those essential mysteries of the spirit which had

imbodied themselves in the passions, and had given to them all their

glory and wonderment, yet lived, yet glowed, with a pure, undying fire.

They rose above their vanishing earthly garments, and disclosed

themselves angels of light. But oh, how beautiful beyond the old form!

I lay thus for a time, and lived as it were an unradiating existence;

my soul a motionless lake, that received all things and gave nothing

back; satisfied in still contemplation, and spiritual consciousness.

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.