CHAPTER XXIV
“We are ne’er like angels till our passions die.” DEKKER.
“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 foldedin 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 hewedthem down like brushwood. Their swords battered on me like hail, buthurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He was dead. But he hadthrottled 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 molestme 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 handhad been laid upon my heart, and had stilled it. My soul was like asummer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yetglistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and thewind of the twilight has begun to blow. The hot fever of life had goneby, and I breathed the clear mountain-air of the land of Death. I hadnever dreamed of such blessedness. It was not that I had in any wayceased to be what I had been. The very fact that anything can die,implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must eithertake to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, andarises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue tolead a purely spiritual life. If my passions were dead, the souls ofthe passions, those essential mysteries of the spirit which had imbodiedthemselves in the passions, and had given to them all their glory andwonderment, yet lived, yet glowed, with a pure, undying fire. They roseabove their vanishing earthly garments, and disclosed themselves angelsof light. But oh, how beautiful beyond the old form! I lay thus fora time, and lived as it were an unradiating existence; my soul amotionless 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 hiswhite bed, and heard the sound of his playthings being laid aside forthe 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 ofthe falling mould upon its lid. It has not the same hollow rattle withinthe coffin, that it sends up to the edge of the grave. They buried mein no graveyard. They loved me too much for that, I thank them; but theylaid me in the grounds of their own castle, amid many trees; where, asit was spring-time, were growing primroses, and blue-bells, and all thefamilies of the woods
Now that I lay in her bosom, the whole earth, and each of her manybirths, was as a body to me, at my will. I seemed to feel the greatheart 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 friendsabove, and they sent a thrill through my heart. I knew that the helpershad 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 roseinto a single large primrose that grew by the edge of the grave,and from the window of its humble, trusting face, looked full in thecountenance of the lady. I felt that I could manifest myself in theprimrose; that it said a part of what I wanted to say; just as in theold time, I had used to betake myself to a song for the same end. Theflower caught her eye. She stooped and plucked it, saying, “Oh, youbeautiful creature!” and, lightly kissing it, put it in her bosom. Itwas the first kiss she had ever given me. But the flower soon began towither, and I forsook it.
It was evening. The sun was below the horizon; but his rosy beams yetilluminated a feathery cloud, that floated high above the world. Iarose, I reached the cloud; and, throwing myself upon it, floated withit in sight of the sinking sun. He sank, and the cloud grew gray; butthe grayness touched not my heart. It carried its rose-hue within;for now I could love without needing to be loved again. The moon camegliding up with all the past in her wan face. She changed my couch intoa ghostly pallor, and threw all the earth below as to the bottom of apale sea of dreams. But she could not make me sad. I knew now, that itis by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soulof 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 andassures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth,power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringinghim inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good;for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and thepower which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meetwith its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image inthe eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in therealms of lofty Death. “Ah! my friends,” thought I, “how I will tendyou, and wait upon you, and haunt you with my love.”
“My floating chariot bore me over a great city. Its faint dull soundsteamed up into the air--a sound--how composed?” How many hopelesscries,” 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 willone day be stilled in the surrounding calm, and that despair dies intoinfinite 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 aboutyou in the dark, think hope into your hearts, when you fancy no one isnear! Soon as my senses have all come back, and have grown accustomed tothis 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 writhingas of death convulsed me; and I became once again conscious of a morelimited, even a bodily and earthly life.