Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13)

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  BOOK II.

  Epigraph

  “Something the heart must have to cherish,

  Must love, and joy, and sorrow learn;

  Something with passion clasp, or perish,

  And in itself to ashes burn.”

  CHAPTER I. SPRING.

  It was a sweet carol, which the Rhodian children sang of old in Spring, bearing in their hands, from door to door, a swallow, as herald of the season;

  “The Swallow is come!

  The Swallow is come!

  O fair are the seasons, and light

  Are the days that she brings,

  With her dusky wings,

  And her bosom snowy white.”

  A pretty carol, too, is that, which the Hungarian boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the returning stork in Spring;

  “Stork! Stork! poor Stork!

  Why is thy foot so bloody?

  A Turkish boy hath torn it;

  Hungarian boy will heal it,

  With fiddle, fife, and drum.”

  But what child has a heart to sing in this capricious clime of ours, where Spring comes sailing in from the sea, with wet and heavy cloud-sails, and the misty pennon of the East-wind nailed to the mast! Yet even here, and in the stormy month of March even, there are bright, warm mornings, when we open our windows to inhale the balmy air. The pigeons fly to and fro, and we hear the whirring sound of wings. Old flies crawl out of the cracks, to sun themselves; and think it is summer. They die in their conceit; and so do our hearts within us, when the cold sea-breath comes from the eastern sea; and again,

  “The driving hail

  Upon the window beats with icy flail.”

  The red-flowering maple is first in blossom, its beautiful purple flowers unfolding a fortnight before the leaves. The moose-wood follows, with rose-colored buds and leaves; and the dog-wood, robed in the white of its own pure blossoms. Thencomes the sudden rain-storm; and the birds fly to and fro, and shriek. Where do they hide themselves in such storms? at what firesides dry their feathery cloaks? At the fireside of the great, hospitable sun, to-morrow, not before; — they must sit in wet garments until then.

  In all climates Spring is beautiful. In the South it is intoxicating, and sets a poet beside himself. The birds begin to sing; — they utter a few rapturous notes, and then wait for an answer in the silent woods. Those green-coated musicians, the frogs, make holiday in the neighbouring marshes. They, too, belong to the orchestra of Nature; whose vast theatre is again opened, though the doors have been so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung with snow and frost, like cobwebs. This is the prelude, which announces the rising of the broad green curtain. Already the grass shoots forth. The waters leap with thrilling pulse through the veins of the earth; the sap through the veins of the plants and trees; and the blood through the veins of man. What a thrill of delight in spring-time! What a joy in being and moving! Men are at work in gardens; and in the air there is an odor of the fresh earth. The leaf-buds begin to swell and blush. The white blossoms of the cherry hang upon the boughs like snow-flakes; and ere long our next-door neighbours will be completely hidden from us by the dense green foliage. The May-flowers open their soft blue eyes. Children are let loose in the fields and gardens. They hold butter-cups under each others’ chins, to see if they love butter. And the little girls adorn themselves with chains and curls of dandelions; pull out the yellow leaves to see if the schoolboy loves them, and blow the down from the leafless stalk, to find out if their mothers want them at home.

  And at night so cloudless and so still! Not a voice of living thing, — not a whisper of leaf or waving bough, — not a breath of wind, — not a sound upon the earth nor in the air! And overhead bends the blue sky, dewy and soft, and radiant with innumerable stars, like the inverted bellof some blue flower, sprinkled with golden dust, and breathing fragrance. Or if the heavens are overcast, it is no wild storm of wind and rain; but clouds that melt and fall in showers. One does not wish to sleep; but lies awake to hear the pleasant sound of the dropping rain.

  It was thus the Spring began in Heidelberg.

  CHAPTER II. A COLLOQUY.

  “And what think you of Tiedge’s Urania,” said the Baron smiling, as Paul Flemming closed the book, and laid it upon the table.

  “I think,” said Flemming, “that it is very much like Jean Paul’s grandfather, — in the highest degree poor and pious.”

  “Bravo!” exclaimed the Baron. “That is the best criticism I have heard upon the book. For my part, I dislike the thing as much as Goethe did. It was once very popular, and lay about in every parlour and bed-room. This annoyed the old gentleman exceedingly; and I do not wonder at it. He complains, that at one time nothing was sung or said but this Urania. He believed in Immortality; but wished to cherish his belief inquietness. He once told a friend of his, that he had, however, learned one thing from all this talk about Tiedge and his Urania; which was, that the saints, as well as the nobility, constitute an aristocracy. He said he found stupid women, who were proud because they believed in Immortality with Tiedge, and had to submit himself to not a few mysterious catechizings and tea-table lectures on this point; and that he cut them short by saying, that he had no objection whatever to enter into another state of existence hereafter, but prayed only that he might be spared the honor of meeting any of those there, who had believed in it here; for, if he did, the saints would flock around him on all sides, exclaiming, Were we not in the right? Did we not tell you so? Has it not all turned out just as we said? And, with such a conceited clatter in his ears, he thought that, before the end of six months, he might die of ennui in Heaven itself.”

  “How shocked the good old ladies must have been,” said Flemming.

  “No doubt, their nerves suffered a little; but the young ladies loved him all the better for being witty and wicked; and thought if they could only marry him, how they would reform him.”

  “Bettina Brentano, for instance.”

  “O no! That happened long afterwards. Goethe was then a silver-haired old man of sixty. She had never seen him, and knew him only by his writings; a romantic girl of seventeen.”

  “And yet much in love with the Sexagenarian. And surely a more wild, fantastic, and, excuse me, German passion never sprang up in woman’s breast. She was a flower, that worshipped the sun.”

  “She afterwards married Achim von Arnim, and is now a widow. And not the least singular part of the affair, is, that, having grown older, and I hope colder, she should herself publish the letters which passed between her and Goethe.”

  “Particularly the letter in which she describes her first visit to Weimar, and her interview with the hitherto invisible divinity of her dreams. The old gentleman took her upon his knees, and she fell asleep with her head upon his shoulder. It reminds me of Titania and Nick Bottom, begging your pardon, always, for comparing your All-sided-One to Nick Bottom. Oberon must have touched her eyes with the juice of Love-in-idleness. However, this book of Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child is a very singular and valuable revelation of the feelings, which he excited in female hearts. You say she afterwards married Achim von Arnim?”

  “Yes; and he and her brother, Clemens Brentano, published that wondrous book, the Boy’s Wonder-Horn.”

  “The Boy’s Wonder-Horn!” said Flemming, after a short pause, for the name seemed to have thrown him into a reverie;— “I know the book almost by heart. Of all your German books it is the one which produces upon my imagination the most wild and magic influence. I have a passion for ballads!”

  “And who has not?” said the Baron with asmile. “They are the gypsy-children of song, born under green hedgerows, in the leafy lanes and by-paths of literature, — in the genial summer-time.”

  “Why do you say summer-time and not summer?” inquired Flemming. “The expression reminds me of your old Minnesingers; — of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and Walter von der Vogelweide, and Count Kraft von Toggenburg, and your own ancestor, I dare say, Burkhart von Hohenfel
s. They were always singing of the gentle summer-time. They seem to have lived poetry, as well as sung it; like the birds who make their marriage beds in the voluptuous trees.”

  “Is that from Shakspere?”

  “No; from Lope de Vega.”

  “You are deeply read in the lore of antiquity, and the Aubades and Watch-Songs of the old Minnesingers. What do you think of the shoe-maker poets that came after them, — with their guilds and singing-schools? It makes me laugh to think how the great German Helicon, shrunk toa rivulet, goes bubbling and gurgling over the pebbly names of Zwinger, Wurgendrussel, Buchenlin, Hellfire, Old Stoll, Young Stoll, Strong Bopp, Dang Brotscheim, Batt Spiegel, Peter Pfort, and Martin Gumpel. And then the Corporation of the Twelve Wise Masters, with their stumpfereime and klingende-reime, and their Hans Tindeisen’s rosemary-weise; and Joseph Schmierer’s flowery-paradise-weise, and Frauenlob’s yellow-weise, and blue-weise, and frog-weise, and looking-glass-weise!”

  “O, I entreat you,” exclaimed Flemming, laughing, “do not call those men poets! You transport me to quaint old Nuremberg, and I see Hans Sachs making shoes, and Hans Folz shaving the burgomaster.”

  “By the way,” interrupted the Baron, “did you ever read Hoffmann’s beautiful story of Master Martin, the Cooper of Nuremberg? I will read it to you this very night. It is the most delightful picture of that age, which you can conceive. But look! the sun has already set behindthe Alsatian hills. Let us go up to the castle and look for the ghost in Prince Ruprecht’s tower. O, what a glorious sunset!”

  Flemming looked at the evening sky, and a shade of sadness stole over his countenance. He told not to his friend the sorrow, with which his heart was heavy; but kept it for himself alone. He knew that the time, which comes to all men, — the time to suffer and be silent, — had come to him likewise; and he spake no word. O well has it been said, that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.

  CHAPTER III. OWL-TOWERS.

  “There sits the old Frau Himmelhahn, perched up in her owl-tower,” said the Baron to Flemming, as they passed along the Hauptstrasse. “She looks down through her round-eyed spectacles from her nest up there, and watches every one that goes by. I wonder what mischief she is hatching now? Do you know she has nearly ruined your character in town? She says you have a rakish look, because you carry a cane, and your hair curls. Your gloves, also, are a shade too light for a strictly virtuous man.”

  “It is very kind in her to take such good care of my character, particularly as I am a stranger in town. She is doubtless learned in the Clothes-Philosophy.”

  “And ignorant of every thing else. She asked a friend of mine the other day, whether Christ was a Catholic or a Protestant.”

  “That is really too absurd!”

  “Not too absurd to be true. And, ignorant as she is, she contrives to do a good deal of mischief in the course of the year. Why, the ladies already call you Wilhelm Meister.”

  “They are at liberty to call me what they please. But you, who know me better, know that I am something more than they would imply by the name.”

  “She says, moreover, that the American ladies sit with their feet out of the window, and have no pocket-handkerchiefs.”

  “Excellent!”

  They crossed the market-place and went up beneath the grand terrace into the court-yard of the castle.

  “Let us go up and sit under the great linden-trees, that grow on the summit of the Rent Tower,” said Flemming. “From that point as from awatch-tower we can look down into the garden, and see the crowd below us.”

  “And amuse ourselves, as old Frau Himmelhahn does, at her window in the Hauptstrasse,” added the Baron.

  The keeper’s daughter unlocked for them the door of the tower, and, climbing the steep stair-case, they seated themselves on a wooden bench under the linden-trees.

  “How beautifully these trees overgrow the old tower! And see what a solid mass of masonry lies in the great fosse down there, toppled from its base by the explosion of a mine! It is like a rusty helmet cleft in twain, but still crested with towering plumes!”

  “And what a motley crowd in the garden! Philisters and Sons of the Muses! And there goes the venerable Thibaut, taking his evening stroll. Do you see him there, with his silver hair flowing over his shoulders, and that friendly face, which has for so many years pored over the Pandects. I assure you, he inspires me with awe. And yet he is a merry old man, and loves his joke, particularly at the expense of Moses and other ancient lawgivers.”

  Here their attention was diverted by a wild-looking person, who passed with long strides under the archway in the fosse, right beneath them, and disappeared among the bushes. He was ill-dressed, — his hair flying in the wind, — his movements hurried and nervous, and the expression of his broad countenance wild, strange, and earnest.

  “Who can that be!” asked Flemming. “He strides away indignantly, like one of Ossian’s ghosts?”

  “A great philosopher, whose name I have forgotten. Truly a strange owl!”

  “He looks like a lion with a hat on.”

  “He is a mystic, who reads Schubert’s History of the Soul, and lives, for the most part, in the clouds of the Middle Ages. To him the spirit-world is still open. He believes in the transmigration of souls; and I dare say is now followingthe spirit of some departed friend, who has taken the form of yonder pigeon.”

  “What a strange hallucination! He lives, I suppose, in the land of cloud-shadows. And, as St. Thomas Aquinas was said to be lifted up from the ground by the fervor of his prayers, so, no doubt, is he by the fervor of his visions.”

  “He certainly appears to neglect all sublunary things; and, to judge from certain appearances, since you seem fond of holy similitudes, one would say, that, like St. Serapion the Sindonite, he had but one shirt. Yet what cares he? he lives in that poetic dream-land of his thoughts, and clothes his dream-children in poetry.”

  “He is a poet, then, as well as a philosopher?”

  “Yes; but a poet who never writes a line. There is nothing in nature to which his imagination does not give a poetic hue. But the power to make others see these objects in the same poetic light, is wanting. Still he is a man of fine powers and feelings; for, next to being a greatpoet, is the power of understanding one, — of finding one’s-self in him, as we Germans say.”

  Three figures, dressed in black, now came from one of the green alleys, and stopped on the brink of a little fountain, that was playing among the gay flowers in the garden. The eldest of the three was a lady in that season of life, when the early autumn gives to the summer leaves a warmer glow, yet fades them not. Though the mother of many children, she was still beautiful; — resembling those trees, which blossom in October, when the leaves are changing, and whose fruit and blossom are on the branch at once. At her side was a girl of some sixteen years, who seemed to lean upon her arm for support. Her figure was slight; her countenance beautiful, though deadly white; and her meek eyes like the flower of the night-shade, pale and blue, but sending forth golden rays. They were attended by a tall youth of foreign aspect, who seemed a young Antinous, with a mustache and a nose à la Kosciusko. In other respects a perfect hero of romance.

  “Unless mine eyes deceive me,” said the Baron, “there is the Frau von Ilmenau, with her pale daughter Emma, and that eternal Polish Count. He is always hovering about them, playing the unhappy exile, merely to excite that poor girl’s sympathies; and as wretched as genius and wantonness can make him.”

  “Why, he is already married, you know,” replied Flemming. “And his wife is young and beautiful.”

  “That does not prevent him from being in love with some one else. That question was decided in the Courts of Love in the Middle Ages. Accordingly he has sent his fair wife to Warsaw. But how pale the poor child looks.”

  “She has just recovered from severe illness. In the winter, you know, it was thought she would not live from hour to hour.”

  “And she has hardly recovered from that disea
se, before she seems threatened with a worse one; namely, a hopeless passion. However, people do not die of love now-a-days.”

  “Seldom, perhaps,” said Flemming. “And yet it is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look upon without emotion. There are names I can never hear spoken without almost starting!”

  “But whom have we here?”

  “That is the French poet Quinet, with his sweet German wife; one of the most interesting women I ever knew. He is the author of a very wild Mystery, or dramatic prose-poem, in which the Ocean, Mont-Blanc, and the Cathedral of Strassburg have parts to play; and the saints on the stained windows of the minster speak, and the statues and dead kings enact the Dance of Death. It is entitled Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew.”

  “Or, as the Danes would translate it, the Shoemaker of Jerusalem. That would be a still more fantastic title for his fantastic book. You know I am no great admirer of the modern French school of writers. The tales of Paul de Kock, who is, I believe, the most popular of all, seem to me like obscene stories told at dinner-tables, after the ladies have retired. It has been well said of him, that he is not only populaire but populacier; and equally well said of George Sand and Victor Hugo, that their works stand like fortifications, well built and well supplied with warlike munitions; but ineffectual against the Grand Army of God, which marches onward, as if nothing had happened. In surveying a national literature, the point you must start from, is national character. That lets you into many a secret; as, for example, Paul de Kock’s popularity. The most prominent trait in the French character, is love of amusement, and excitement; and—”

  “I should say, rather, the fear of ennui,” interrupted Flemming. “One of their own writers has said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in the noble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants of the champaign fled into the castles, at theapproach of some plundering knight, or lawless Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal gardens. What do you think of that?”