The Pilgrims of the Rhine Part 2

APPLICATION OF THE POEM TO THE TALE TO WHICH IT IS PREFIXED.--THE RHINE,--ITS IDEAL CHARACTER IN ITS HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY a.s.sOCIATIONS.

Eno'!--my song is closing, and to thee, Land of the North, I dedicate its lay; As I have done the simple tale to be The drama of this prelude!

Faraway Rolls the swift Rhine beneath the starry ray; But to my ear its haunted waters sigh; Its moonlight mountains glimmer on my eye; On wave, on marge, as on a wizard's gla.s.s, Imperial ghosts in dim procession pa.s.s; Lords of the wild, the first great Father-men, Their fane the hill-top, and their home the glen; Frowning they fade; a bridge of steel appears With frank-eyed Caesar smiling through the spears; The march moves onwards, and the mirror brings The Gothic crowns of Carlovingian kings Vanished alike! The Hermit rears his Cross, And barbs neigh shrill, and plumes in tumult toss, While (knighthood's sole sweet conquest from the Moor) Sings to Arabian lutes the Tourbadour.

Not yet, not yet; still glide some lingering shades, Still breathe some murmurs as the starlight fades, Still from her rock I hear the Siren call, And see the tender ghost in Roland's mouldering hall!

X.

APPLICATION OF THE POEM CONTINUED.--THE IDEAL LENDS ITS AID TO THE MOST FAMILIAR AND THE MOST ACTUAL SORROW OF LIFE.--FICTION COMPARED TO SLEEP,--IT STRENGTHENS WHILE IT SOOTHES.

Trite were the tale I tell of love and doom, (Whose life hath loved not, whose not mourned a tomb?) But fiction draws a poetry from grief, As art its healing from the withered leaf.

Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the sombre truth, Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch!

When death the altar and the victim youth, Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the porch.

As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail, Clothe the rude hill-tops, lull the Northern gale; With childlike lore the fatal course beguile, And brighten death with Love's untiring smile.

Along the banks let fairy forms be seen "By fountain clear, or spangled starlike sheen."*

Let sound and shape to which the sense is dull Haunt the soul opening on the Beautiful.

And when at length, the symbol voyage done, Surviving Grief shrinks lonely from the sun, By tender types show Grief what memories bloom From lost delight, what fairies guard the tomb.

Scorn not the dream, O world-worn; pause a while, New strength shall nerve thee as the dreams beguile, Stung by the rest, less far shall seem the goal!

As sleep to life, so fiction to the soul.

* "Midsummer Night's Dream."

THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE

CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO QUEEN NYMPHALIN.

IN one of those green woods which belong so peculiarly to our island (for the Continent has its forests, but England its woods) there lived, a short time ago, a charming little fairy called Nymphalin. I believe she is descended from a younger branch of the house of Mab; but perhaps that may only be a genealogical fable, for your fairies are very susceptible to the pride of ancestry, and it is impossible to deny that they fall somewhat reluctantly into the liberal opinions so much in vogue at the present day.

However that may be, it is quite certain that all the courtiers in Nymphalin's domain (for she was a queen fairy) made a point of a.s.serting her right to this ill.u.s.trious descent; and accordingly she quartered the Mab arms with her own,--three acorns vert, with a gra.s.shopper rampant.

It was as merry a little court as could possibly be conceived, and on a fine midsummer night it would have been worth while attending the queen's b.a.l.l.s; that is to say, if you could have got a ticket, a favour not obtained without great interest.

But, unhappily, until both men and fairies adopt Mr. Owen's proposition, and live in parallelograms, they will always be the victims of _ennui_.

And Nymphalin, who had been disappointed in love, and was still unmarried, had for the last five or six months been exceedingly tired even of giving b.a.l.l.s. She yawned very frequently, and consequently yawning became a fas.h.i.+on.

"But why don't we have some new dances, my Pipalee?" said Nymphalin to her favourite maid of honour; "these waltzes are very old-fas.h.i.+oned."

"Very old-fas.h.i.+oned," said Pipalee.

The queen gaped, and Pipalee did the same.

It was a gala night; the court was held in a lone and beautiful hollow, with the wild brake closing round it on every side, so that no human step could easily gain the spot. Wherever the shadows fell upon the brake a glow-worm made a point of exhibiting itself, and the bright August moon sailed slowly above, pleased to look down upon so charming a scene of merriment; for they wrong the moon who a.s.sert that she has an objection to mirth,--with the mirth of fairies she has all possible sympathy. Here and there in the thicket the scarce honeysuckles--in August honeysuckles are somewhat out of season--hung their rich festoons, and at that moment they were crowded with the elderly fairies, who had given up dancing and taken to scandal. Besides the honeysuckle you might see the hawkweed and the white convolvulus, varying the soft verdure of the thicket; and mushrooms in abundance had sprung up in the circle, glittering in the silver moonlight, and acceptable beyond measure to the dancers: every one knows how agreeable a thing tents are in a _fete champetre_! I was mistaken in saying that the brake closed the circle entirely round; for there was one gap, scarcely apparent to mortals, through which a fairy at least might catch a view of a brook that was close at hand, rippling in the stars, and checkered at intervals by the rich weeds floating on the surface, interspersed with the delicate arrowhead and the silver water-lily. Then the trees themselves, in their prodigal variety of hues,--the blue, the purple, the yellowing tint, the tender and silvery verdure, and the deep ma.s.s of shade frowning into black; the willow, the elm, the ash, the fir, and the lime, "and, best of all, Old England's haunted oak;" these hues were broken again into a thousand minor and subtler shades as the twinkling stars pierced the foliage, or the moon slept with a richer light upon some favoured glade.

It was a gala night; the elderly fairies, as I said before, were chatting among the honeysuckles; the young were flirting, and dancing, and making love; the middle-aged talked politics under the mushrooms; and the queen herself and half-a-dozen of her favourites were yawning their pleasure from a little mound covered with the thickest moss.

"It has been very dull, madam, ever since Prince Fayzenheim left us,"

said the fairy Nip.

The queen sighed.

"How handsome the prince is!" said Pipalee.

The queen blushed.

"He wore the prettiest dress in the world; and what a mustache!" cried Pipalee, fanning herself with her left wing.

"He was a c.o.xcomb," said the lord treasurer, sourly. The lord treasurer was the honestest and most disagreeable fairy at court; he was an admirable husband, brother, son, cousin, uncle, and G.o.dfather,--it was these virtues that had made him a lord treasurer. Unfortunately they had not made him a sensible fairy. He was like Charles the Second in one respect, for he never did a wise thing; but he was not like him in another, for he very often said a foolish one.

The queen frowned.

"A young prince is not the worse for that," retorted Pipalee. "Heigho!

does your Majesty think his Highness likely to return?"

"Don't tease me," said Nymphalin, pettishly.

The lord treasurer, by way of giving the conversation an agreeable turn, reminded her Majesty that there was a prodigious acc.u.mulation of business to see to, especially that difficult affair about the emmet-wasp loan. Her Majesty rose; and leaning on Pipalee's arm, walked down to the supper tent.

"Pray," said the fairy Trip to the fairy Nip, "what is all this talk about Prince Fayzenheim? Excuse my ignorance; I am only just out, you know."

"Why," answered Nip, a young courtier, not a marrying fairy, but very seductive, "the story runs thus: Last summer a foreigner visited us, calling himself Prince Fayzenheim: one of your German fairies, I fancy; no great things, but an excellent waltzer. He wore long spurs, made out of the stings of the horse-flies in the Black Forest; his cap sat on one side, and his mustachios curled like the lip of the dragon-flower. He was on his travels, and amused himself by making love to the queen. You can't fancy, dear Trip, how fond she was of hearing him tell stories about the strange creatures of Germany,--about wild huntsmen, water-sprites, and a pack of such stuff," added Nip, contemptuously, for Nip was a freethinker.

"In short?" said Trip.

"In short, she loved," cried Nip, with a theatrical air.

"And the prince?"

"Packed up his clothes, and sent on his travelling-carriage, in order that he might go at his ease on the top of a stage-pigeon; in short--as you say--in short, he deserted the queen, and ever since she has set the fas.h.i.+on of yawning."

"It was very naughty in him," said the gentle Trip.

"Ah, my dear creature," cried Nip, "if it had been you to whom he had paid his addresses!"

Trip simpered, and the old fairies from their seats in the honeysuckles observed she was "sadly conducted;" but the Trips had never been too respectable.

Meanwhile the queen, leaning on Pipalee, said, after a short pause, "Do you know I have formed a plan!"

"How delightful!" cried Pipalee. "Another gala!"

"Pooh, surely even you must be tired with such levities: the spirit of the age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether." The queen said this with an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the "Society for the Diffusion of General Stupefaction" had been recently established among the fairies, and its tracts had driven all the light reading out of the market. "The Penny Proser" had contributed greatly to the increase of knowledge and yawning, so visibly progressive among the courtiers.

"No," continued Nymphalin; "I have thought of something better than galas. Let us travel!"