Hyperion Part 10

"All these indefinite longings,--these yearnings after an unknown somewhat, I have felt and still feel within me; but not yet their fulfilment."

"That is because you have not faith;" answered the Professor.

"The Present is an age of doubt and disbelief, and darkness; out of which shall arise a clear and bright Hereafter. In the second part of Goethe's Faust, there is a grand and striking scene, where in the cla.s.sical Walpurgis Night, on the Pharsalian Plains, the mocking Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique Sphinxes, and boldly questions them, and reads their riddles. The red light of innumerable watch-fires glares all round about, and s.h.i.+nes upon the terrible face of the arch-scoffer; while on either side, severe, majestic, solemnly serene, we behold the gigantic forms of the children of Chimaera, half buried in the earth, their mild eyes gazing fixedly, as if they heard through the midnight, the swift-rus.h.i.+ng wings of the Stymphalides, striving to outstrip the speed of Alcides' arrows! Angry griffins are near them; and not far are Sirens, singing their wondrous songs from the rocking branches of the willow trees! Even thus does a scoffing and unbelieving Present sit down, between an unknown Future and a too believing Past, and question and challenge the gigantic forms of faith, half buried in the sands of Time, and gazing forward steadfastly into the night, whilst sounds of anger and voices of delight alternate vex and soothe the ear of man!--But the time will come, when the soul of man shall return again childlike and trustful to its faith in G.o.d; and look G.o.d in the face and die; for it is an old saying, full of deep, mysterious meaning, that he must die, who hath looked upon a G.o.d. And this is the fate of the soul, that it should die continually. No sooner here on earth does it awake to its peculiar being, than it struggles to behold and comprehend the Spirit of Life. In the first dim twilight of its existence, it beholds this spirit, is pervaded by its energies,--is quick and creative likethe spirit itself, and yet slumbers away into death after having seen it. But the image it has seen, remains, in the eternal procreation, as a h.o.m.ogeneal existence, is again renewed, and the seeming death, from moment to moment, becomes the source of kind after kind of existences in ever-ascending series. The soul aspires ever onward to love and to behold. It sees the image more perfect in the brightening twilight of the dawn, in the ever higher-rising sun. It sleeps again, dying in the clearer vision; but the image seen remains as a permanent kind; and the slumberer awakes anew and ever higher after its own image, till at length, in the full blaze of noonday, a being comes forth, which, like the eagle, can behold the sun and die not. Then both live on, even when this bodily element, the mist and vapor through which the young eagle gazed, dissolves and falls to earth."

"I am not sure that I understand you," said Flemming; "but if I do, you mean to say, that, as the body continually changes and takes unto itselfnew properties, and is not the same to-day as yesterday, so likewise the soul lays aside its idiosyncrasies, and is changed by acquiring new powers, and thus may be said to die. And hence, properly speaking, the soul lives always in the Present, and has, and can have, no Future; for the Future becomes the Present, and the soul that then lives in me is a higher and more perfect soul; and so onward forevermore."

"I mean what I say," continued the Professor; "and can find no more appropriate language to express my meaning than that which I have used. But as I said before, pardon must be granted to the novelty of words, when it serves to ill.u.s.trate the obscurity of things. And I think you will see clearly from what I have said, that this earthly life, when seen hereafter from heaven, will seem like an hour pa.s.sed long ago, and dimly remembered;--that long, laborious, full of joys and sorrows as it is, it will then have dwindled down to a mere point, hardly visible to the far-reaching ken of the disembodied spirit. But the spirit itself soars onward.

And thus death is neither an end nor a beginning. It is a transition not from one existence to another, but from one state of existence to another. No link is broken in the chain of being; any more than in pa.s.sing from infancy to manhood, from manhood to old age. There are seasons of reverie and deep abstraction, which seem to me a.n.a.logous to death. The soul gradually loses its consciousness of what is pa.s.sing around it; and takes no longer cognizance of objects which are near. It seems for the moment to have dissolved its connexion with the body. It has pa.s.sed as it were into another state of being. It lives in another world. It has flown over lands and seas; and holds communion with those it loves, in distant regions of the earth, and the more distant heaven. It sees familiar faces, and hears beloved voices, which to the bodily senses are no longer visible and audible. And this likewise is death; save that when we die, the soul returns no more to the dwelling it has left."

"You seem to take it for granted," interrupted Flemming, "that, in our reveries, the soul really goes out of the body into distant places, instead of summoning up their semblance within itself by the power of memory and imagination!"

"Something I must take for granted," replied the Professor. "We will not discuss that point now. I speak not without forethought.

Just observe what a glorious thing human life is, when seen in this light; and how glorious man's destiny. I am; thou art; he is! seems but a school-boy's conjugation. But therein lies a great mystery.

These words are significant of much. We behold all round about us one vast union, in which no man can labor for himself without laboring at the same time for all others; a glimpse of truth, which by the universal harmony of things becomes an inward benediction, and lifts the soul mightily upward. Still more so, when a man regards himself as a necessary member of this union. The feeling of our dignity and our power grows strong, when we say to ourselves; My being is not objectless and in vain; I am a necessary link in the great chain, which, from the full development of consciousness in the first man, reaches forward into eternity. All the great, and wise, and good among mankind, all the benefactors of the human race, whose names I read in the world's history, and the still greater number of those, whose good deeds have outlived their names,--all those have labored for me. I have entered into their harvest. I walk the green earth, which they inhabited. I tread in their footsteps, from which blessings grow. I can undertake the sublime task, which they once undertook, the task of making our common brotherhood wiser and happier. I can build forward, where they were forced to leave off; and bring nearer to perfection the great edifice which they left uncompleted. And at length I, too, must leave it, and go hence.

O, this is the sublimest thought of all! I can never finish the n.o.ble task; therefore, so sure as this task is my destiny, I can never cease to work, and consequently never cease to be. What men call death cannot break off this task, which is never-ending; consequently no periodis set to my being, and I am eternal. I lift my head boldly to the threatening mountain peaks, and to the roaring cataract, and to the storm-clouds swimming in the fire-sea overhead and say; I am eternal, and defy your power! Break, break over me!

and thou Earth, and thou Heaven, mingle in the wild tumult! and ye Elements foam and rage, and destroy this atom of dust,--this body, which I call mine! My will alone, with its fixed purpose, shall hover brave and triumphant over the ruins of the universe; for I have comprehended my destiny; and it is more durable than ye! It is eternal; and I, who recognise it, I likewise am eternal! Tell me, my friend, have you no faith in this?"

"I have;" answered Flemming, and there was another pause. He then said;

"I have listened to you patiently and without interruption. Now listen to me. You complain of the skepticism of the age. This is one form in which the philosophic spirit of the age presents itself. Let me tell you, that another form, whichit a.s.sumes, is that of poetic reverie. Plato of old had dreams like these; and the Mystics of the Middle Ages; and still their disciples walk in the cloud-land and dream-land of this poetic philosophy. Pleasant and cool upon their souls lie the shadows of the trees under which Plato taught. From their whispering leaves comes wafted across the noise of populous centuries a solemn and mysterious sound, which to them is the voice of the Soul of the World. All nature has become spiritualized and transfigured; and, wrapt in beautiful, vague dreams of the real and the ideal, they live in this green world, like the little child in the German tale, who sits by the margin of a woodland lake, and hears the blue heaven and the branches overhead dispute with their reflection in the water, which is the reality and which the image. I willingly confess, that such day-dreams as these appeal strongly to my imagination. Visitants and attendants are they of those lofty souls, which, soaring ever higher and higher, build themselves nests under the very eaves of the stars, forgetful that theycannot live on air, but must descend to earth for food. Yet I recognise them as day-dreams only; as shadows, not substantial things. What I mainly dislike in the New Philosophy, is the cool impertinence with which an old idea, folded in a new garment, looks you in the face and pretends not to know you, though you have been familiar friends from childhood. I remember an English author who, in speaking of your German Philosophies, says very wisely; 'Often a proposition of inscrutable and dread aspect, when resolutely grappled with, and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments of uncouth terminology,--and dragged forth into the open light of day, to be seen by the natural eye and tried by merely human understanding, proves to be a very harmless truth, familiar to us from old, sometimes so familiar as to be a truism. Too frequently the anxious novice is reminded of Dryden in the Battle of the Books; there is a helmet of rusty iron, dark, grim, gigantic; and within it, at the farthest corner, is a head no bigger than a walnut.'--Can you believe, thatthese words ever came from the lips of Carlyle! He has himself taken up the uncouth terminology of late; and many pure, simple minds are much offended at it. They seem to take it as a personal insult. They are angry; and deny the just meed of praise.

It is, however, hardly worth while to lose our presence of mind. Let us rather profit as we may, even from this spectacle, and recognise the monarch in his masquerade. For, hooded and wrapped about with that strange and antique garb, there walks a kingly, a most royal soul, even as the Emperor Charles walked amid solemn cloisters under a monk's cowl;--a monarch still in soul. Such things are not new in the history of the world. Ever and anon they sweep over the earth, and blow themselves out soon, and then there is quiet for a season, and the atmosphere of Truth seems more serene. Why would you preach to the wind? Why reason with thunder-showers? Better sit quiet, and see them pa.s.s over like a pageant, cloudy, superb, and vast."

The Professor smiled self-complacently, but said not a word.

Flemming continued;

"I will add no more than this;--there are many speculations in Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, which, though pleasant to walk in, and lying under the shadow of great names, yet lead to no important result. They resemble rather those roads in the western forests of my native land, which, though broad and pleasant at first, and lying beneath the shadow of great branches, finally dwindle to a squirrel track, and run up a tree!"

The Professor hardly knew whether he should laugh or be offended at this sally; and, laying his hand upon Flemming's arm, he said seriously;

"Believe me, my young friend, the time will come, when you will think more wisely on these things. And with you, I trust, that time will soon come; since it moves more speedily with some than with others. For what is Time? The shadow on the dial,--the striking of the clock,--the running of the sand,--day and night,--summerand winter,--months, years, centuries! These are but arbitrary and outward signs,--the measure of Time, not Time itself! Time is the Life of the Soul. If not this, then tell me what it is?"

The high and animated tone of voice in which the Professor uttered these words aroused the Baron from his sleep; and, not distinctly comprehending what was said, but thinking the Professor asked what time it was, he innocently exclaimed;

"I should think it must be near midnight!"

This somewhat disconcerted the Professor, who took his leave soon afterward. When he was gone the Baron said;

"Excuse me for treating your guest so cavalierly. His transcendentalism annoyed me not a little; and I took refuge in sleep. One would think, to judge by the language of this sect, that they alone saw any beauty in Nature; and, when I hear one of them discourse, I am instantly reminded of Goethe's Baccalaureus, when he exclaims; 'The world was not before I created it; Ibrought the sun up out of the sea; with me began the changeful course of the moon; the day decked itself on my account; the earth grew green and blossomed to meet me; at my nod in that first night, the pomp of all the stars developed itself; who but I set you free from all the bonds of Philisterlike, contracting thoughts? I, however, emanc.i.p.ated as my mind a.s.sures me I am, gladly pursue my inward light, advance boldly in a transport peculiarly my own, the bright before me, and the dark behind!'--Do you not see a resemblance? O, they might be modest enough to confess, that one straggling ray of light may, by some accident, reach the blind eyes of even us poor, benighted heathens?"

"Alas! how little veneration we have!" said Flemming. "I could not help closing the discussion with a jest. An ill-timed levity often takes me by surprise. On all such occasions I think of a scene at the University, where, in the midst of a grave discussion on the possibility of Absolute Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock splitopen, from which sprang a toad, who could not be supposed to have any knowledge of the external world, and consequently his motion must have been absolute. The learned Professor, who presided on that occasion, was hardly more startled and astonished, than was our learned Professor, five minutes ago. But come; wind up your watch, and let us go to bed."

"By the way," said the Baron, "did you mind what a curious head he has. There are two crowns upon it."

"That is a sign," replied Flemming, "that he will eat his bread in two kingdoms."

"I think the poor man would be very thankful," said the Baron with a smile, "if he were always sure of eating it in one. He is what the Transcendentalists call a G.o.d-intoxicated man; and I advise him, as Sauteul advised Bossuet, to go to Patmos and write a new Apocalypse."

CHAPTER VII. MILL-WHEELS AND OTHER WHEELS.

A few days after this the Baron received letters from his sister, telling him, that her physicians had prescribed a few weeks at the Baths of Ems, and urging him to meet her there before the fas.h.i.+onable season.

"Come," said he to Flemming; "make this short journey with me. We will pa.s.s a few pleasant days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places of Na.s.sau. It will drive away the melancholy day-dreams that haunt you. Perhaps some future bride is even now waiting for you, with dim presentiments and undefined longings, at the Serpent's Bath."

"Or some widow of Ems, with a cork-leg!" said Flemming, smiling; and then added, in a toneof voice half jest, half earnest, "Certainly; let us go in pursuit of her;--

'Whoe'er she be,

That not impossible she,

That shall command my heart and me.

Where'er she lie,

Hidden from mortal eye,

In shady leaves of destiny.'"

They started in the afternoon for Frankfort, pursuing their way slowly along the lovely Bergstra.s.se, famed throughout Germany for its beauty. They pa.s.sed the ruined house where Martin Luther lay concealed after the Diet of Worms, and through the village of Handschuhsheimer, as old as the days of King Pepin the Short,--a hamlet, lying under the hills, half-buried in blossoms and green leaves. Close on the right rose the mountains of the mysterious Odenwald; and on the left lay the Neckar, like a steel bow in the meadow. Farther westward, a thin, smoky vapor betrayed the course of the Rhine; beyond which, like a troubled sea, ran the blue, billowy Alsatian hills. Song of birds, and sound of evening bells, and fragrance of sweet blossoms filled the air; and silent and slow sank the broad red sun, half-hidden amid folding clouds.

"We shall not pa.s.s the night at Weinheim," said the Baron to the postilion, who had dismounted to walk up the hill, leading to the town. "You may drive to the mill in the Valley of Birkenau."

The postilion seized one of his fat horses by the tail, and swung himself up to his seat again. They rattled through the paved streets of Weinheim, and took no heed of the host of the Golden Eagle, who stood so invitingly at the door of his own inn; and the ruins of Burg Windeck, above there, on its mountain throne, frowned at them for hurrying by, without staying to do him homage.

"The old ruin looks well from the valley," said the Baron; "but let us beware of climbing that steep hill. Most travellers are like children; they must needs touch whatever they behold. They climb up to every old broken tooth of acastle, which they find on their way;--get a toilsome ascent and hot suns.h.i.+ne for their pains, and come down wearied and disappointed. I trust we are wiser."

They crossed the bridge, and turned up the stream, pa.s.sing under an arch of stone, which serves as a gateway to this enchanted Valley of Birkenau. A cool and lovely valley! shut in by high hills;--shaded by alder-trees and tall poplars, under which rushes the Wechsnitz, a noisy mountain brook, that ever and anon puts its broad shoulder to the wheel of a mill, and shows that it can labor as well as laugh. At one of these mills they stopped for the night.

A mill forms as characteristic a feature in the romantic German landscape, as in the romantic German tale. It is not only a mill, but likewise an ale-house and rural inn; so that the a.s.sociations it suggests are not of labor only, but also of pleasure. It stands in the narrow defile, with its picturesque, thatched roof; thither throng thepeasants, of a holiday; and there are rustic dances under the trees.

In the twilight of the fast-approaching summer night, the Baron and Flemming walked forth along the borders of the stream. As they heard it, rus.h.i.+ng and gus.h.i.+ng among the stones and tangled roots, and the great wheel turning in the current, with its never-ceasing plas.h.!.+ plas.h.!.+ it brought to their minds that exquisite, simple song of Goethe, the Youth and the Mill-brook. It was for the moment a nymph, which sang to them in the voice of the waters.

"I am persuaded," said Flemming, "that, in order fully to understand and fell the popular poetry of Germany, one must be familiar with the German landscape. Many sweet little poems are the outbreaks of momentary feelings;--words, to which the song of birds, the rustling of leaves, and the gurgle of cool waters form the appropriate music. Or perhaps I should say they are words, which man has composed to the music of nature. Can you not, even now, hear this brooklet tellingyou how it is on its way to the mill, where at day-break the miller's daughter opens her window, and comes down to bathe her face in its stream, and her bosom is so full and white, that it kindles the glow of love in the cool waters!"

"A most delightful ballad, truly," said the Baron. "But like many others of our little songs, it requires a poet to fell and understand it. Sing them in the valley and woodland shadows, and under the leafy roofs of garden walks, and at night, and alone, as they were written. Sing them not in the loud world,--for the loud world laughs such things to scorn. It is Mueller who says, in that little song, where the maiden bids the moon good evening;

'This song was made to be sung at night,

And he who reads it in broad daylight,

Will never read the mystery right;

And yet it is childlike easy!'