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

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  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, emancipated as my mind assures 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 god-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 fashionable season.

  “Come,” said he to Flemming; “make this short journey with me. We will pass a few pleasant days at Ems, and visit the other watering-places of Nassau. 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 Bergstrasse, famed throughout Germany for its beauty. They passed 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 pass 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 sunshine for their pains, and come down wearied and disappointed. I trust we are wiser.”

  They crossed the bridge, and turned up the stream, passing 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 associations 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, rushing and gushing among the stones and tangled roots, and the great wheel turning in the current, with its never-ceasing plash! plash! 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!’

  He has written a great many pretty songs, in which the momentary, indefinite longings and impulses of the soul of man find an expression. Hecalls them the songs of a Wandering Horn-player. There is one among them much to our present purpose. He expresses in it, the feeling of unrest and desire of motion, which the sight and sound o
f running waters often produce in us. It is entitled, `Whither?’ and is worth repeating to you.

  `I heard a brooklet gushing

  From its rocky fountain near,

  Down into the valley rushing,

  So fresh and wondrous clear.

  `I know not what came o’er me,

  Nor who the counsel gave;

  But I must hasten downward,

  All with my pilgrim-stave.

  `Downward, and ever farther,

  And ever the brook beside;

  And ever fresher murmured,

  And ever clearer the tide.

  `Is this the way I was going?

  Whither, O brooklet, say!

  Thou hast, with thy soft murmur,

  Murmured my senses away.

  `What do I say of a murmur?

  That can no murmur be;

  ‘T is the water-nymphs, that are singing

  Their roundelays under me.

  `Let them sing, my friend, let them murmur,

  And wander merrily near;

  The wheels of a mill are going

  In every brooklet clear.’”

  “There you have the poetic reverie,” said Flemming, “and the dull prose commentary and explanation in matter of fact. The song is pretty; and was probably suggested by some such scene as this, which we are now beholding. Doubtless all your old national traditions sprang up in the popular mind as this song in the poet’s.”

  “Your opinion is certainly correct,” answered the Baron; “and yet all this play of poetic fancy does not prevent me from feeling the chill night air, and the pangs of hunger. Let us go back to the mill, and see what our landlady has for supper. Did you observe what a loud, sharp voice she has?”

  “People always have, who live in mills, and near water-falls.”

  On the following morning they emerged unwillingly from the green, dark valley, and journeyed along the level highway to Frankfort, where in the evening they heard the glorious Don Giovanni of Mozart. Of all operas this was Flemming’s favorite. What rapturous flights of sound! what thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry of passion! what a delirium of sense! — what an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with and finding a voice in those tones. Flemming and the Baron listened with ever-increasing delight.

  “How wonderful this is!” exclaimed Flemming, transported by his feelings. “How the chorus swells and dies, like the wind of summer! How those passages of mysterious import seem to wave to and fro, like the swaying branches of trees; from which anon some solitary sweetvoice darts off like a bird, and floats away and revels in the bright, warm sunshine! And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments, — of flutes, and drums, and trumpets, — this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger, — a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand.”

  Then came, in the midst of these excited feelings, the ballet; drawing its magic net about the soul. And soon, from the tangled yet harmonious mazes of the dance, came forth a sylph-like form, her scarf floating behind her, as if she were fanning the air with gauze-like wings. Noiseless as a feather or a snow-flake falls, did her feet touch the earth. She seemed to floatin the air, and the floor to bend and wave under her, as a branch, when a bird alights upon it, and takes wing again. Loud and rapturous applause followed each wonderful step, each voluptuous movement; and, with a flushed cheek and burning eye, and bosom panting to be free, stood the gracefully majestic figure for a moment still, and then the winged feet of the swift dancing-girls glanced round her, and she was lost again in the throng.

  “How truly exquisite this is!” exclaimed the Baron, after joining loudly in the applause. “What a noble figure! What grace! what attitudes! How much soul in every motion! how much expression in every gesture! I assure you, it produces upon me the same effect as a beautiful poem. It is a poem. Every step is a word; and the whole together a poem!”

  The Baron and Flemming were delighted with the scene; and at the same time exceedingly amused with the countenance of an old prude in the next box, who seemed to look upon the wholemagic show, with such feelings as Michal, Saul’s daughter, experienced, when she looked from her window and saw King David dancing and leaping with his scanty garments.

  “After all,” said Flemming, “the old French priest was not so far out of the way, when he said, in his coarse dialect, that the dance is the Devil’s procession; and paint and ornaments, the whetting of the devil’s sword; and the ring that is made in dancing, the devil’s grindstone, whereon he sharpens his sword; and finally, that a ballet is the pomp and mass of the Devil, and whosoever entereth therein, entereth into his pomp and mass; for the woman who singeth is the prioress of the Devil, and they that answer are clerks, and they that look on are parishioners, and the cymbals and flutes are the bells, and the musicians that play are the ministers, of the Devil.”

  “No doubt this good lady near us, thinks so likewise,” answered the Baron laughing; “but she likes it, for all that.”

  When the play was over the Baron begged Flemming to sit still, till the crowd had gone.

  “I have a strange fancy,” said he, “whenever I come to the theatre, to see the end of all things. When the crowd is gone, and the curtain raised again to air the house, and the lamps are all out, save here and there one behind the scenes, the contrast with what has gone before is most impressive. Every thing wears a dream-like aspect. The empty boxes and stalls, — the silence, — the smoky twilight, and the magic scene dismantled, produce in me a strange, mysterious feeling. It is like a dim reflection of a theatre in water, or in a dusty mirror; and reminds me of some of Hoffmann’s wild Tales. It is a practical moral lesson, — a commentary on the play, and makes the show complete.”

  It was truly as he said; only tenfold more desolate, solemn, and impressive; and produced upon the mind the effect we experience, when slumber is suddenly broken, and dreams and realities mingle, and we know not yet whether we sleep or wake. As they at length passed out through the dimly-lighted passage, they heard a vulgar-looking fellow, with a sensual face and shaggy whiskers, say to some persons who were standing near him, and seemed to be hangers-on of the play-house;

  “I shall run her six nights at Munich, and then take her on to Vienna.”

  Flemming thought he was speaking of some favorite horse. He was speaking of his beautiful wife, the ballet-dancer.

  CHAPTER VIII. OLD HUMBUG.

  What most interested our travellers in the ancient city of Frankfort, was neither the opera nor the Ariadne of Dannecker, but the house in which Goethe was born, and the scenes he frequented in his childhood, and remembered in his old age. Such for example are the walks around the city, outside the moat; the bridge over the Maine, with the golden cock on the cross, which the poet beheld and marvelled at when a boy; the cloister of the Barefooted Friars, through which he stole with mysterious awe to sit by the oilcloth-covered table of old Rector Albrecht; and the garden in which his grandfather walked up and down among fruit-trees and rose-bushes, in long morning gown, black velvet cap, and the antique leather gloves, which he annually received as Mayor on Pipers-Doomsday, representing a kind of middle personage between Alcinous and Laertes. Thus, O Genius! are thy foot-prints hallowed; and the star shines forever over the place of thy nativity.

  “Your English critics may rail as they list,” said the Baron, while he and Flemming were returning from a stroll in the leafy gardens, outside the moat; “but, after all, Goethe was a magnificent old fellow. Only think of his life; his youth of passion, alternately aspiring and desponding, stormy, impetuous, headlong; — his romantic manhood, in which passion assumes the form of
strength; assiduous, careful, toiling, without haste, without rest; and his sublime old age, — the age of serene and classic repose, where he stands like Atlas, as Claudian has painted him in the Battle of the Giants, holding the world aloft upon his head, the ocean-streams hard frozen in his hoary locks.”

  “A good illustration of what the world calls his indifferentism.”

  “And do you know I rather like this indifferentism? Did you never have the misfortune to live in a community, where a difficulty in the parish seemed to announce the end of the world? or to know one of the benefactors of the human race, in the very `storm and pressure period’ of his indiscreet enthusiasm? If you have, I think you will see something beautiful in the calm and dignified attitude which the old philosopher assumes.”

  “It is a pity, that his admirers had not a little of this philosophic coolness. It amuses me to read the various epithets, which they apply to him; The Dear, dear Man! The Life-enjoying Man! The All-sided One! The Representative of Poetry upon earth! The Many-sided Master-Mind of Germany! His enemies rush into the other extreme, and hurl at him the fierce names of Old Humbug! and Old Heathen! which hit like pistol-bullets.”

  “I confess, he was no saint.”

  “No; his philosophy is the old ethnic philosophy. You will find it all in a convenient andconcentrated, portable form in Horace’s beautiful Ode to Thaliarcus. What I most object to in the old gentleman is his sensuality.”

  “O nonsense. Nothing can be purer than the Iphigenia; it is as cold and passionless as a marble statue.”