Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces Part 17

And history vouches, to his honour, for the fact that when, on his reaching the house, he found his bookshelves dusted and his inkpot washed white on the outside, and all his belongings "put in order"--(in a _different_ order to the previous one, be it observed),--he at once praised Lenette in the kindest manner, without a shade of irritation, and said she had performed her household processes and accomplished her cleaning and brus.h.i.+ng in a manner quite after his heart, for that it was impossible to be _too_ exquisitely neat and spick and span in the eyes of commonplace women, particularly such as composed the infernal triumvirate who were to be present that day (_i. e_. the bookbinder's, the barber's, and the shoemaker's wives); and on that account he had left the intendance-general of the theatre of operations entirely to her--whereas, in the case of scholars, like Stiefel and himself, the room might be turned into a complete English scouring, carding, and brus.h.i.+ng apparatus--for men of their sort never glanced down at trifles of that description from their sublime heights of mental contemplation.

But how pleasantly and cheerily did the president of the eating congress put all things in train by this his kindly temper, even before the a.s.sembling of the congress; though this appeared most fully after it _had_ a.s.sembled. When the thirteen United States, by their thirteen deputies, dine together at a round table to celebrate some arrangement which they have jointly arrived at (and that they do so at least, establishes the fact that when thirteen dine at a table the thirteenth does not necessarily die), it is an easy matter for the thirteen free states in question, paying, as they do, the expenses out of thirteen treasuries, to treat their delegates as liberally as Firmian treated his guests. It is pleasant to look at cattle grazing in the meadows, but not so pleasant to see Nebuchadnezzar conducting himself like one of them; and similarly it is repulsive to see a man of cultivation pasturing with a too eager delight on the stomach's meadow, the dinner-table (though it is not so in the case of the poor). Firmian's guests were all of one mind, even the married couples; for it is a leading characteristic of the lower cla.s.ses that they enter into a dozen treaties of peace and make as many declarations of war, in the course of the four-and-twenty hours, and particularly that they enn.o.ble each of their meals into a feast of love and reconciliation. Firmian saw in the lower cla.s.ses a kind of standing troupe of actors playing Shakespeare's comedies, and thousands of times fancied that the dramatist himself was prompting them unseen. He had long coveted the pleasure of having some enjoyment or other of which he could give away some portion to the poor; he envied those rich Britons who pay the score of a beershop full of labourers, or, like Caesar, give free commons to an entire town. The poor who _have_ houses give to the poor who have not--one lazzarone gives to another--as sh.e.l.l-fish become the habitations of other crustaceans, and earthworms are the habitable universes of lesser worms.

In the evening arrived Peltzstiefel, who was too learned a man to eat swine's flesh, or a measure of salt, among the untaught vulgar. And then Siebenkaes could once more entertain an idea unintelligible to any one but Stiefel. He could lay the sceptre and the tinted gla.s.s-ball of the imperial globe upon the table, and in his capacity of king of the feast and of the eagle, say that his long hair served him for a crown, like that of the old Frank kings, his own crown having been knocked down by his landlord's rifle; he could a.s.sert that the rule by which only he by whose hands the eagle was brought down became king was clearly imitated from the code of the Fraticelli Berghadi, who could only elect to the papacy a person who had killed a child. That 'twas true he had it not in his power to reign over Kuhschnappel so long by fourteen days as the King of Prussia over the ecclesiastical see of Elten (the latter period being one of _fifteen_ days)--that 'twas true he had a crown and revenues, but the latter were sadly reduced, cut down by one-half, in fact--and that he was far too much like the Great Mogul, who formerly had an income of two hundred and twenty-six millions a year, but now receives only the one hundred and thirteenth part of that sum; however, at his (Siebenkaes's) coronation, though there had been no general liberation of the _wicked_ prisoners, yet _one good_ one had been released, namely, himself; also that, like Peter the Second of Arragon, he had been crowned with nothing worse than bread: finally that, under his ephemeral rule, n.o.body was beheaded, robbed, or beaten to death; and--which delighted him most of all--the feeling that he was like one of the ancient German princes, who governed, defended, and increased a free people, and was a member of that free people himself, &c. &c.

The throats in this royal chamber grew louder and drier as the evening advanced; the pipes (those chimneys of the mouth) made of the room a heaven of clouds, and of their heads heavens of joy. Outside, the autumn sun brooded, with warm, flaming wings, over the cold, naked earth, as if in haste to hatch the spring. The guests had drawn the quint, (I mean the five prizes of the five senses) out of the ninety numbers, or ninety years of the lottery of human life; the famished eyes were sparkling, and in Firmian's soul the buds of gladness had burst their leaflet envelopes and swelled forth into flower. Deep happiness always leads love by the hand; and Firmian longed to-day, with an unutterable longing, to press his heart, all heavy with bliss, upon Lenette's breast, and there forget all his wants and hers.

These circ.u.mstances, in their combination, inspired him with a strange idea. He determined, on this happy day, to go and redeem the p.a.w.ned silken flower-wreath and plant it in some dark spot out of doors, then take her out there in the evening, or perhaps even in the night, and give her a pleasant little surprise at the sight of it. He slipped out and took his way to the p.a.w.nbroker's; but--as all our resolves begin in us as tiny sparks, and end in broad lightning flashes--so, as he went, he improved his original idea (of redeeming the wreath from p.a.w.n) into an altogether different one, that of buying real flowers and planting _them_ by way of goal of the nocturnal ramble. There was no difficulty in getting red and white roses from the greenhouse of a gardener of the Prince of Oettingen-Spielberg, who had lately come to the place. He walked round under the upright gla.s.s roofs, all behung with blossom, went to the gardener and got what he wanted--only no forget-me-nots, for these, of course, the man had left the meadows to supply. But forget-me-nots were indispensable, to make the loving surprise complete. He therefore took his real autumn flowers to the p.a.w.nbroker woman's, in whose hands his silk plants had been deposited, that he might twine the dead, poor, coc.o.o.n forget-me-nots among the living roses. What was his astonishment to learn that the pledge had been redeemed and taken away by Mr. von Meyern, and that he had paid a sum of money so considerable that the woman thought she still owed the advocate a debt of thanks. It needed all the strength of a heart fortified by love to keep him from going at once to the Venner with a storm of reproaches for this move of warlike strategy--this pledge-robbery--for he could scarce endure the thought (a mistaken idea, 'tis true, only given rise to by Lenette's silence on the subject of the garland) of his pure love's pretty token in Rosa's beringed and thievish fingers. The brokeress, too, though she was not to blame, would have been severely taken to task had it been any other day, one less full of love and happiness; as it was, however, Firmian cursed in a merely general manner, especially as the woman gave him silk forget-me-nots of somebody else's, when he said he wanted some. When in the street again, he was at variance with himself as to the spot where he should plant his flowers; he wished he knew where to find some fresh-dug bed of fine old mould, of which the dark colour should set off to advantage the red and blue of the flowers. At length he saw a field which is broken into beds at all seasons--in summer and in winter, ay, in the bitterest cold--the churchyard, with its church, hanging like a vineyard on the slope of a hill beyond the town. He slipped in by a back entrance and saw the fresh-raised boundary-hillock which marked the close of an earthly life, rolled, as it were, up to the foot of the triumphal gate, through which a mother, with her newborn child in her arms, had pa.s.sed away into the brighter world.

Upon this earthen bier he laid his flowers down, like a funeral garland, and then went home.

The members of the gladsome company had scarcely missed him; they were floating, like fish benumbed in their element saturated with foreign matter, paralysed with the poison of pleasure; but Stiefel was still in his senses, and was talking with Lenette. The world has already learned from the former portion of this history--the people of the house, too, were well aware--that Firmian was fond of running away from his guests, in order to throw himself back into their society with a greater zest, and that he interrupted his pleasures in order that he might savour them--as Montaigne used to have himself awakened from his sleep that he might thoroughly appreciate what it was--and so Firmian merely said that he had been out.

All the waves, even the most turbulent of them, subsided at last, and there was nothing left in the ebb save those three pearl mussels, our three friends. Firmian gazed with tender eyes upon Lenette's bright ones, for he loved her the more fondly because he had a pleasure in store for her. Stiefel glowed with a love so pure that, without any serious error of logic, he was able to define and cla.s.sify it to himself as a mere sympathetic rejoicing in her happiness; particularly as his love for the wife placed wings, not fetters, upon his affection for her husband. Indeed the Schulrath's anxiety was directed altogether to the reverse side of the question, his only doubt being whether he had it in him to express his love with adequate force and ardour.

Therefore he pressed both their hands many times, and laid them between his own; he said beauty was a thing to which he very rarely paid any attention, but that he _had_ been observant of it that day, because that of Mrs. Siebenkaes had appeared to such great advantage amid all her labours, particularly with all these ordinary women about her, and at _them_ he had not so much as looked. He a.s.sured the advocate that he had considered his goodness and kindness to this admirable wife of his as a mark of increased personal friends.h.i.+p for himself; and he a.s.severated to her that his affection for her, of which he had given some little proof as they came together from Augspurg in the coach, would grow stronger the more she loved his friend, and through that friend, himself.

Into this cup of joy of hers Firmian of course cast no drop of poison relative to (what he _supposed_ to be) the news of the Venner's having made prize of the flowers. He was so happy that day; his little toy crown had so tenderly covered and soothed all the bleeding wounds on that head of his whence he had lifted his crown of thorns just a little way (as Alexander's diadem soothed the bleeding head of Lysimachus), that his only wish was that the night might be as long as a Polar one, since it was just as calm and peaceful, as bright and serene. In moments like these the poison fangs of all our troubles are broken out, and a Paul, like him in Malta of old, has turned all the tongues of the soul's serpents to stone.

When Stiefel rose to go, Firmian did not detain him, but insisted that he should allow them both to go with him, not to their own door only, but to his. They went out. The broad heaven, with the streets of the City of G.o.d all lit with the lamps which are suns, drew them on, out beyond the narrow crossways of the town, and into the great spectacle hall of night, where we breathe the blue of heaven, and drink the east breeze. We should conclude and sanctify all our chamber feasts by "going to church" in that cool, vast temple, that great cathedral whose dome is adorned with the sacred picture of the Most Holy, portrayed in a mosaic of stars. They roamed on refreshed and exalted by breezes of the coming spring hastening to blow before their appointed time, those breezes which wipe the snow away from the mountains. All nature gave promise of a mild winter--to lead the poor, who have no fuel, gently through the darkest quarter of the year--it was a season such as none curse except the rich, who can order sleighs but not snow.

The two men carried on a conversation befitting the sublimity of the night; Lenette said nothing. Firmian said, "How near together these miserable oyster banks, the villages, seem to be, and how small they are; when we go from one of these villages to another the journey seems to us about the same in length as a mite's, if it crawled on a map from the name of the one to the name of the other, might appear to it. And to higher spirits our earth-ball may perhaps be a globe for their children, which their tutor turns and explains."

"Yet," said Stiefel, "there may very possibly be worlds even smaller than this earth of ours; and, after all, there _must_ be something in ours since the Lord Christ died for it." At this the warm blood rushed to Lenette's heart. Firmian merely answered, "More Saviours than one have died for this world and mankind, and I am convinced that Christ will one day take many a good man by the hand, and say, '_You_ have suffered under your Pontius Pilate too!' And for that matter many a seeming Pilate is very likely a Messiah, if the truth were known."

Lenette's secret dread was that her husband was really an absolute Atheist, or at all events a "philosopher."

He led them by snaky windings and corkscrew paths to the churchyard; but suddenly his eyes grew moist, as one's do when pa.s.sing through a thick mist, when he thought of the mother's grave with the flowers on it, and on Lenette who gave no sign of ever becoming one. He strove to expel the sadness from his heart by philosophic speeches. He said human beings and watches stop while they are being wound up for a new long day; and that he believed that those dark intervals of sleep and death, which break up and divide our existence into segments, prevent any one particular idea from getting to glare too brightly, and our never-cooling desires from searing us wholly--and oven our ideas from interflowing into confusion--just as the planetary systems are separated by gloomy wastes of s.p.a.ce, and the solar systems by yet greater gulfs of darkness. That the human spirit could never take in and contain the endless stream of knowledge which flows throughout eternity, but that it sips it by portions at a time, with intervals between: the eternal day would blind our souls were it not broken into separate days by midsummer nights (which we call, now sleep, now death), framing its noons in a border of mornings and evenings.

Lenette was frightened, and would have liked to run away behind the wall and not go into the churchyard; however, she had to go in.

Firmian, holding her closely to him, took a roundabout path to the place where the wreath was. He closed the little clattering metal gates which guarded the pious verses and the brief life-careers. They came to the better-cla.s.s graves nearest the church, which lay round that fortress like a kind of moat. Here there were nothing but upright monuments standing over the quiet mummies below, while further on were mere trapdoors let down upon rec.u.mbent human beings. A bony head, which was sleeping in the open air, Firmian set a-rolling, and--heedless of Lenette's oft-renewed entreaties to him not to make himself "unclean"--he took up in both his hands this last capsule case of a spirit of many dwelling places, and, looking into the empty window-openings of the ruined pleasure-house, said, "They ought to get up into the pulpit inside there at midnight, and put this scalped mask of our Personality down upon the desk in place of the Bible and the hourgla.s.s, and preach upon it as a text to the _other_ heads sitting there still packed in their skins. They should have _my_ head, if they liked to skin it after my decease, and hook it up in the church like a herring's, upon a string, by way of angel at the font--so that the silly souls might for once in their lives look _upward_ and then _downward_--for we hang and hover between heaven and the grave. The hazel-nut worm is still in _our_ heads, Herr Schulrath, but it has gone through its transformation and flown out from this one, for there are two holes in it and a kernel of dust."[51]

Lenette was terrified at this G.o.dless jesting in such close proximity to ghosts; yet it was but a disguised form of mental exaltation. All at once she whispered, "There's something looking down at us over the top of the charnel house. See, see, it's raising itself higher up." It was only the evening breeze lifting a cloud higher; but this cloud had the semblance of a bier resting on the roof, and a hand was stretched forth from it, while a star, s.h.i.+ning close to the cloud's edge, seemed like a white flower laid on the heart of the form which lay upon the bier of cloud.

"It is only a cloud," said Firmian; "come nearer to the house, and then we shall lose sight of it." This furnished him with the best possible pretext for leading her up to the blooming Eden in miniature upon the grave. When they had walked some twenty paces, the bier was hidden by the house. "Dear me," said the Rath, "what may that be in flower there?" "Upon my life," cried Firmian, "white and red roses, and forget-me-nots, wife." She looked tremblingly, doubtingly, inquiringly at this resting-place of a heart, decked with a garland, at this altar with the sacrifice lying beneath it. "Very well then, Firmian," she cried, "I'm sure I can't help it, it is no fault of mine; but _oh_! you _shouldn't_ have done such a thing! oh dear! oh dear! will you _never_ cease tormenting me!" She began to weep, and hid her streaming eyes on Stiefel's arm.

For she, who was so delicately clever in nothing as in touchiness and taking umbrage, supposed this garland was the silken one from her wardrobe, and that her husband knew that Rosa had presented it to her, and had placed the flowers upon this grave of a woman, dead in childbed, in mockery either of her childlessness or of herself. These mutual misunderstandings were to the full as confounding to him as to her; he had to combat _her_ errors, and at the same time ask himself what his _own_ consisted of. It was only now that she told him that Rosa had some time since returned the p.a.w.ned wreath to her. Upon the green thistle-plant of mistrust of her love, a flower or two now came out; nothing is more painful than when a person whom we love hides something from us for the first time, were it but the merest trifle. It was a great distress and disappointment to Firmian that the pleasant surprise he had prepared should have taken such a bitter turn. There was too much of the artificial about his garland to commence with, but the foul fiend, Chance, had malevolently crisped and twirled it up, with added weeds, into a more unreal and unnatural affair than ever.

Let us take care then not to hire Chance into the heart's service.

The Schulrath, at his wits' end, gave vent to his embarra.s.sment in a warm curse or two upon the Venner's head; he tried to establish a peace congress between the husband and wife (who were sunk in silent musing), and strongly urged Lenette to give her hand to her husband and be reconciled to him. But nothing would induce her. Yet, after long hesitation, she agreed to do it, but only on condition that he would first _wash_ his hands. Hers shrunk away in convulsive loathing from touching those which had been in contact with a skull.

The Schulrath took away the battle-flag from them, and delivered a peace-sermon which came warm from his heart. He reminded them what the place was in which they stood, surrounded by human beings all gone to their last account; he bade them think for a moment how near they were to the angels who guard the graves of the just, the very mother (he pointed out) who was mouldering at their feet, with her baby in her arms (and whose eldest son he himself was bringing along in his Latin studies--he was then in Sch.e.l.ler's _principia_), might be said to be admonis.h.i.+ng them not to fall out about a flower or two over her quiet grave, but rather to take them away as olive-branches of peace.

Lenette's heart drank _his_ theologic holy water with far greater zest than Firmian's pure, philosophic Alp water, and the latter's lofty thoughts of Death shot athwart her soul without the slightest penetration. However, the sacrifice of reconciliation was accomplished and mutual letters of indulgence exchanged. At the same time, a peace like this, brought about by a third party, is always something in the nature of a mere suspension of hostilities. Strangely enough they both awoke in the morning with tears in their eyes, but could not tell whether happy dreams or sad ones had left these drops behind.

FIRST FLOWER PIECE.

THE DEAD CHRIST PROCLAIMS THAT THERE IS NO G.o.d.

INTRODUCTION.

My aim in writing this fiction must be my excuse for its audacity.

Men, as a cla.s.s, deny G.o.d's existence with about the same small amount of true consideration, conviction, and feeling as that with which most individual men admit it. Even in our regularly established _systems_ of belief we form collections of mere words, game-counters, medallions--just as coin-collectors acc.u.mulate cabinetsful of coins--and not till long after our collection is made do we convert the words into sentiments, the coins into enjoyments. We may believe in the immortality of the soul for twenty years long, yet it may be the twenty-first before, in some one supreme moment, we suddenly perceive, to our astonishment, what this belief involves, and how wonderful is the warmth of that naphtha spring.

In a similar manner to this, I myself was suddenly horror-struck at the perception of the poison-power of that vapour which strikes with such suffocating fumes to the heart of him who enters the school of Atheistic doctrine. It would cause me less pain to deny immortality than to deny G.o.d's existence. In the former case, what I lose is but a world hidden by clouds; but in the latter, I lose this present world, that is to say, its sun. The whole spiritual universe is shattered and s.h.i.+vered, by the hand of Atheism, into innumerable glittering quicksilver globules of individual personalities, running hither and thither at random, coalescing, and parting asunder without unity, coherence, or consistency. In all this wide universe there is none so utterly solitary and alone as a denier of G.o.d. With orphaned heart--a heart which has lost the Great Father--he mourns beside the immeasurable corpse of Nature, a corpse no longer animated or held together by the Great Spirit of the Universe--a corpse which grows in its grave; and by this corpse he mourns until he himself crumbles and falls away from it into nothingness. The wide earth lies before such an one like the great Egyptian sphinx of stone, half-buried in the desert sand; the immeasurable universe has become for him but the cold iron-mask upon an eternity which is without form and void.

I would also fain awaken, with this piece of fiction, some alarm in the hearts of certain masters and teachers (reading, as well as _read_); for, in truth, these men (now that they have come to do their appointed day's work, like so many convicts, in the ca.n.a.l-diggings and in the mine-shaft excavations, of the "critical" schools of philosophy) discuss G.o.d's existence as cold-bloodedly and chill-heartedly as though it were a question of the existence of the kraken or the unicorn.

For others, who have not progressed quite so far as this I would further remark, that the belief in immortality may without contradiction, co-exist with the belief in Atheism, for the self-same necessity which, in this life, placed my little s.h.i.+ning dew-drop of a personality in a flower-cup and beneath a sun, can certainly do the same in a second life--ay, and could embody me with still greater ease for a second time than for the first.

When, in our childhood, we are told that, at midnight, when our sleep reaches near the soul and darkens our very dreams, the dead arise from theirs, and in the churches ape the religious services of the living, we shudder at death, because of the dead, and in the loneliness of night we turn our eyes in terror from the tall windows of the silent church, and dread to look at their pale s.h.i.+mmer to see whether it be truly the reflection of the moon's beams--or _something else_!

Childhood and its terrors (even more than its pleasures) a.s.sume, in our dreams, wings and brightness, s.h.i.+ning glowworm-like in the dark night of the soul. Extinguish not these little flickering sparks! Leave us the dim and painful dreams even; they serve to make life's high-lights all the more brilliant. And what will ye give us in exchange for the dreams which raise and bear us up from beneath the roar of the falling cataract back to the peaceful mountain-heights of childhood, where the river of life was flowing as yet in peace, reflecting heaven upon its little surface, on towards the precipices of the future course.

Once on a summer evening I was lying upon a quiet hillside in the sun.

I fell asleep, and dreamed that I awoke in a churchyard. The rattle of the wheels of the clock running down as it was striking eleven, had awakened me. I looked for the sun in the dark and void night sky, for I supposed that some eclipse was hiding it with the moon. And all the graves were open, and the iron doors of the charnel-house kept opening and shutting, moved by invisible hands. Athwart the walls shadows went flitting; but no bodies cast those shadows and there were others, too, moving about out in the open air. Within the open coffins there were none now asleep, except the children. Nothing was in the sky but sultry fog, heavy and grey, ranging there in great clammy folds; and some gigantic shadow closed and closed this fog as in a net, and drew it ever nearer, closer, and hotter. Up overhead I heard the thunder of distant avalanches, and beneath my feet the first footfalls of a boundless earthquake. The church was heaved and shaken to and fro by two terrific discords striving in it, beating in stormy effort to attain harmonious resolution. Now and then a greyish glimmer pa.s.sed with rapid gleam flittering athwart the windows; but, whenever this glimmer came, the lead and iron of the frames always melted and ran rolling down. The fog's net, and the quaking of the earth, drove me into the temple, past gleaming, glittering basilisks, brooding in poison-nests beside the door. I pa.s.sed among shadows, strange and unknown to me; but they all bore the impress of the centuries. These shadows stood all grouped about the altar, and their b.r.e.a.s.t.s quivered and throbbed--their _b.r.e.a.s.t.s_ but not their hearts. There was but one of the dead still lying on his pillow, and he was one who had but just been buried in the church; he lay at peace, his breast without a throb, a happy dream upon his smiling face. But now, as I came in (I, one of the living), his sleep broke, he awoke, and smiled no more; with painful effort he raised his heavy eyelids--and there was no eye beneath--and in his beating breast there was no heart, but a deep wound instead. He raised his hands, folded as it for prayer; but then his arms shot out and came apart from his poor trunk, the folded hands came off and fell away. Upon the dome above there was inscribed the dial of eternity--but figures there were none, and the dial itself was its own gnomon; a great black finger was pointing at it, and the dead strove hard to read the time upon it.

And at this point a lofty, n.o.ble form, bearing the impress of eternal sorrow, came sinking down towards our group, and rested on the altar; whereupon all the dead cried out, "Christ! Is there no G.o.d?"

He answered, "There is none."

At this the dead quivered and trembled; but now it was not their b.r.e.a.s.t.s alone that throbbed; the quivering ran all through the shadows, so that one by one the shudder shook them into nothingness. And Christ spake on, saying, "I have traversed the worlds, I have risen to the suns, with the milky ways I have pa.s.sed athwart the great waste s.p.a.ces of the sky; there is no G.o.d. And I descended to where the very shadow cast by Being dies out and ends, and I gazed out into the gulf beyond, and cried, 'Father, where art Thou?' But answer came there none, save the eternal storm which rages on, controlled by none; and towards the west, above the chasm, a gleaming rainbow hung, but there was no sun to give it birth, and so it sank and fell by drops into the gulf. And when I looked up to the boundless universe for the Divine eye, behold, it glared at me from out a socket, empty and bottomless. Over the face of chaos brooded Eternity, chewing it for ever, again and yet again.

Shriek on, then, discords, shatter the shadows with your shrieking din, for HE IS NOT!"

The pale and colourless shades flickered away to nothingness, as frosty fog dissolves before warm breath, and all grew void. Ah! then the dead children, who had been asleep out in the graves, awoke, and came into the temple, and fell down before the n.o.ble form (a sight to rend one's heart), and cried, "Jesus, have we no Father?" He made answer, with streaming tears, "We are orphans all, both I and ye. We have no Father."

Then the discords clashed and clanged more harshly yet; the s.h.i.+vering walls of the temple parted asunder, and the temple and the children sank--the earth and sun sank with them--and the boundless fabric of the universe Bank down before us, while high on the summit of immeasurable nature Jesus stood and gazed upon the sinking universe, besprent with thousand suns, and like a mine dug in the face of black eternal night; the suns being miners' lamps, and the milky way the veins of silvery ore.

And as he gazed upon the grinding ma.s.s of worlds, the wild torch dance of starry will-o'-the-wisps, and all the coral banks of throbbing hearts--and saw how world by world shook forth its glimmering souls on to the Ocean of Death--then He, sublime, loftiest of finite beings, raised his eyes towards the nothingness and boundless void, saying, "Oh dead, dumb, nothingness! necessity endless and chill! Oh! mad unreasoning Chance--when will ye dash this fabric into atoms, and me too? Chance, knowest thou--thou knowest not--when thou dost march, hurricane-winged, amid the whirling snow of stars, extinguis.h.i.+ng sun after sun upon thy onward way, and when the sparkling dew of constellations ceases to gleam, as thou dost pa.s.s them by? How every soul in this great corpse-trench of an universe is utterly alone? _I_ am alone--none by me--O Father, Father! where is that boundless breast of thine, that I may rest upon it? Alas! if every soul be its own father and creator, why shall it not be its own destroying angel too?

Is this a man still near me? Wretched being! That petty life of thine is but the sigh of nature, or the echo of that sigh. Your wavering cloudy forms are but reflections of rays cast by a concave mirror upon the clouds of dust which shroud your world--dust which is dead men's ashes. Look ye down into the chasm athwart the face of which the ash-clouds float and fly. A mist of worlds rises up from the Ocean of Death; the future is a gathering cloud, the present a falling vapour.

Dost thou see and know thy earth?"

Here Christ looked downward, and his eyes grew full of tears, and he spake on, and said, "Alas! I, too, was once of that poor earth; then I was happy, then I still possessed my infinite Father, and I could look up from the hills with joy to the boundless heaven, and I could cry even in the bitterness of death, 'My Father, take thy Son from out this bleeding earthly sh.e.l.l, and lift Him to thy heart.' Alas! too happy dwellers upon earth, ye still believe in Him. Your sun, it may be, is setting at this hour, and amid flowers and brilliance, and with tears ye sink upon your knees, and, lifting up your hands in rapturous joy, ye cry each one aloud up to the open heavens, 'Oh Father, infinite, eternal, hear! Thou knowest _me_ in all my littleness, even as Thou knowest all things, and Thou seest my wounds and sorrows, and Thou wilt receive me after death and soothe and heal them all.' Alas!

unhappy souls! For after death these wounds will _not_ be healed. But when the sad and weary lays down his worn and wounded frame upon the earth to sleep towards a fairer brighter morn all truth, goodness and joy,--behold! he awakes amid a howling chaos, in a night endless and everlasting; and no morning dawns, there is no healing hand, no everlasting Father. Oh, mortal, who standest near, if still thou breathest the breath of life, wors.h.i.+p and pray to Him, or else thou losest Him for evermore."

And I fell down and peered into the s.h.i.+ning ma.s.s of worlds, and beheld the coils of the great serpent of eternity all twined about those worlds; these mighty coils began to writhe and rise, and then again they tightened and contracted, folding round the universe twice as closely as before; they wound about all nature in thousandfolds, and crashed the worlds together, and crushed down the boundless temple to a little churchyard chapel. And all grew narrow, and dark, and terrible.

And then a great immeasurable bell began to swing in act to toll the last hour of Time, and shatter the fabric of the universe to countless atoms,--when my sleep broke up, and I awoke.

And my soul wept for joy that it could still wors.h.i.+p G.o.d--my gladness, and my weeping, and my faith--these were my prayer! And as I rose the sun was gleaming low in the west, behind the ripe purple ears of corn, and casting in peace the reflection of his evening blushes over the sky to where the little moon was rising clear and cloudless in the east.

And between the heaven and the earth, a gladsome, shortlived world was spreading tiny wings, and, like myself, _living_ in the eternal Father's sight. And from all nature round, on every hand, rose music-tones of peace and joy, a rich, soft, gentle harmony, like the sweet chime of bells at evening pealing far away.

SECOND FLOWER PIECE.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.

A sky of glorious and sublime beauty was spread out above this earth; a rainbow stood in the east, like the circle of eternity: a storm, with broken wings, pa.s.sed thundering, as if weary, along by the lightning conductors, and away through the glowing gate of Eden in the west; the evening sun gazed after the storm with a brightness tender as if it shone through tears, resting its glance upon the great triumphal arch of Nature. All enraptured with the loveliness of the scene, I closed my eyes, and seeing nothing, save the sun s.h.i.+ning warm and glowing through my lids, listened to the thunder as it died away in the far distance.

And at length the mists of sleep sank down into my soul, and shrouded all the spring in folds of grey; but soon there came luminous bands of brightness piercing through the mist, and by-and-by shone many-tinted lines of beauty, and ere long the dark face of my sleep was painted with the brilliant pictures of the world of dreams.