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

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Made of fine gold, with divers sundry dragons.”

  You step into its shade and coolness out of the hot streets of life; a mysterious light streams through the painted glass of the marigold windows, staining the cusps and crumpled leaves of the window-shafts, and the cherubs and holy-water-stoups below. Here and there is an image of the Virgin Mary; and other images, “in divers vestures, called weepers, stand in housings made about the tomb”; and, above all, swells the vast dome of heaven, with its star-mouldings, and the flaming constellations, like the mosaics in the dome of St. Peter’s. Have you not heard funeral psalms from the chauntry? Have you not heard the sound of church-bells, as I promised; mysterious sounds from the Past and Future, as from the belfries outside the cathedral; even such a mournful, mellow, watery peal of bells, as is heard sometimes at sea, from cities afar off below the horizon?

  I know not how this Romanesque, and at times flamboyant, style of architecture may please thecritics. They may wish, perhaps, that I had omitted some of my many ornaments, my arabesques, and roses, and fantastic spouts, and Holy-Roods and Gallilee-steeples. But would it then have been Romanesque?

  But perhaps, gentle reader, thou art one of those, who think the days of Romance gone forever. Believe it not! O, believe it not! Thou hast at this moment in thy heart as sweet a romance as was ever written. Thou art not less a woman, because thou dost not sit aloft in a tower, with a tassel-gentle on thy wrist! Thou art not less a man, because thou wearest no hauberk, nor mail-sark, and goest not on horseback after foolish adventures! Nay, nay! Every one has a Romance in his own heart. All that has blessed or awed the world lies there; and

  “The oracle within him, that which lives,

  He must invoke and question, — not dead books,

  Not ordinances, not mould-rotten papers.”

  Sooner or later some passages of every one’s romance must be written, either in words or actions. They will proclaim the truth; for Truth is thought, which has assumed its appropriate garments, either of words or actions; while Falsehood is thought, which, disguised in words or actions not its own, comes before the blind old world, as Jacob came before the patriarch Isaac, clothed in the goodly raiment of his brother Esau. And the world, like the patriarch, is often deceived; for, though the voice is Jacob’s voice, yet the hands are the hands of Esau, and the False takes away the birth-right and the blessing from the True. Hence it is, that the world so often lifts up its voice and weeps.

  That very pleasing and fanciful Chinese Romance, the Shadow in the Water, ends with the hero’s marrying both the heroines. I hope my gentle reader feels curious to know the end of this Romance, which is a shadow upon the earth; and see whether there be any marriage at all in it.

  That is the very point I am now thinking of, as I sit here at my pleasant chamber window, and enjoy the balmy air of a bright summer morning, and watch the motions of the golden robin, that sits on its swinging nest on the outermost, pendulous branch of yonder elm. The broad meadows and the steel-blue river remind me of the meadows of Unterseen, and the river Aar; and beyond them rise magnificent snow-white clouds, piled up like Alps. Thus the shades of Washington and William Tell seem to walk together on these Elysian Fields; for it was here, that in days long gone, our great Patriot dwelt; and yonder clouds so much resemble the snowy Alps, that they remind me irresistibly of the Swiss. Noble examples of a high purpose and a fixed will! Do they not move, Hyperion-like on high? Were they not, likewise, sons of Heaven and Earth?

  Nothing can be more lovely than these summer mornings; nor than the southern window at which I sit and write, in this old mansion, which is like an Italian Villa. But O, this lassitude, — thisweariness, — when all around me is so bright! I have this morning a singular longing for flowers; a wish to stroll among the roses and carnations, and inhale their breath, as if it would revive me. I wish I knew the man, who called flowers “the fugitive poetry of Nature.” From this distance, from these scholastic shades, — from this leafy, blossoming, and beautiful Cambridge, I stretch forth my hand to grasp his, as the hand of a poet! — Yes; this morning I would rather stroll with him among the gay flowers, than sit here and write. I feel so weary!

  Old men with their staves, says the Spanish poet, are ever knocking at the door of the grave. But I am not old. The Spanish poet might have included the young also. — No matter! Courage, and forward! The Romance must be finished; and finished soon.

  O thou poor authorling! Reach a little deeper into the human heart! Touch those strings, — touch those deeper strings, and more boldly, or the notes will die away like whispers, and no earshall hear them, save thine own! And, to cheer thy solitary labor, remember, that the secret studies of an author are the sunken piers upon which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark waters of Oblivion. They are out of sight; but without them no superstructure can stand secure!

  And now, Reader, since the sermon is over, and we are still sitting here in this Miserere, let us read aloud a page from the old parchment manuscript on the lettern before us; let us sing it through these dusky aisles, like a Gregorian Chant, and startle the sleeping congregation!

  “I have read of the great river Euripus, which ebbeth and floweth seven times a day, and with such violence, that it carrieth ships upon it with full sail, directly against the wind. Seven times in an hour ebbeth and floweth rash opinion, in the torrent of indiscreet and troublesome apprehensions; carrying critic calumny and squint-eyed detraction mainly against the wind of wisdom and judgment.”

  In secula seculorum! Amen!

  CHAPTER II. CURFEW BELLS.

  Welcome Disappointment! Thy hand is cold and hard, but it is the hand of a friend! Thy voice is stern and harsh, but it is the voice of a friend! O, there is something sublime in calm endurance, something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of suffering without complaining, which makes disappointment oftentimes better than success!

  The emperor Isaac Angelus made a treaty with Saladin, and tried to purchase the Holy Sepulchre with gold. Richard Lion-heart scorned such alliance, and sought to recover it by battle. Thus do weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle. But the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means; and struggles nobly with his foe, to achieve great deeds. Therefore, whosoever thou art that sufferest, try not to dissipate thy sorrow by the breath of the world, nor drown its voice in thoughtless merriment. It is a treacherous peace that is purchased by indulgence. Rather take this sorrow to thy heart, and make it a part of thee, and it shall nourish thee till thou art strong again.

  The shadows of the mind are like those of the body. In the morning of life they all lie behind us; at noon, we trample them under foot; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and deepening before us. Are not, then, the sorrows of childhood as dark as those of age? Are not the morning shadows of life as deep and broad as those of its evening? Yes; but morning shadows soon fade away, while those of evening reach forward into the night and mingle with the coming darkness. Man is begotten in delight and born in pain; and in these are the rapture and labor of his life fore-shadowed from the beginning. But thelife of man upon this fair earth is made up for the most part of little pains and little pleasures. The great wonder-flowers bloom but once in a lifetime.

  A week had already elapsed since the events recorded in the last chapter. Paul Flemming went his way, a melancholy man, “drinking the sweet wormwood of his sorrow.” He did not rail at Providence and call it fate, but suffered and was silent. It is a beautiful trait in the lover’s character, that he thinks no evil of the object loved. What he suffered was no swift storm of feeling, that passes away with a noise, and leaves the heart clearer; but a dark phantom had risen up in the clear night, and, like that of Adamastor, hid the stars; and if it ever vanished away for a season, still the deep sound of the moaning main would be heard afar, through many a dark and lonely hour. And thus he journeyed on, wrapped in desponding gloom, and mainly heedless
of all things around him. His mind was distempered. That one face was always before him; that one voice forever saying;

  “You are not the Magician.”

  Painful, indeed, it is to be misunderstood and undervalued by those we love. But this, too, in our life, must we learn to bear without a murmur; for it is a tale often repeated.

  There are persons in this world to whom all local associations are naught. The genius of the place speaks not to them. Even on battle-fields, where the voice of this genius is wont to be loudest, they hear only the sound of their own voices; they meet there only their own dull and pedantic thoughts, as the old grammarian Brunetto Latini met on the plain of Roncesvalles a poor student riding on a bay mule. This was not always the case with Paul Flemming, but it had become so now. He felt no interest in the scenery around him. He hardly looked at it. Even the difficult mountain-passes, where, from his rocky eyrie the eagle-eyed Tyrolese peasant had watched his foe, and the roaring, turbid torrent underneath, which had swallowed up the bloody corse, that fell from the rocks like a crushed worm, awakened no lively emotion in his breast. All around him seemed dreamy and vague; all within dim, as in a sun’s eclipse. As the moon, whether visible or invisible, has power over the tides of the ocean, so the face of that lady, whether present or absent, had power over the tides of his soul; both by day and night, both waking and sleeping. In every pale face and dark eye he saw a resemblance to her; and what the day denied him in reality, the night gave him in dreams.

  “This is a strange, fantastic world,” said Berkley, after a very long silence, during which the two travellers had been sitting each in his corner of the travelling carriage, wrapped in his own reflections. “A very strange, fantastic world; where each one pursues his own golden bubble, and laughs at his neighbour for doing the same. I have been thinking how a moral Linnæus would classify our race. I think he would divide it, not as Lord Byron did, into two great classes, the bores and those who are bored, but into three, namely; Happy Men, Lucky Dogs, and Miserable Wretches. This is more true and philosophical, though perhaps not quite so comprehensive. He is the Happy Man, who, blessed with modest ease, a wife and children, — sits enthroned in the hearts of his family, and knows no other ambition, than that of making those around him happy. But the Lucky Dog is he, who, free from all domestic cares, saunters up and down his room, in morning gown and slippers; drums on the window of a rainy day; and, as he stirs his evening fire, snaps his fingers at the world, and says, ‘I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for.’ I had a friend, who is now no more. He was taken away in the bloom of life, by a very rapid — widow. He was by birth and by profession a beau, — born with a quizzing-glass and a cane. Cock of the walk, he flapped his wings, and crowed among the feathered tribe. But alas! a fair, white partlet has torn his crest out, and he shall crow no more. You will generally find him of a morning, smelling round a beef-cart, with domestic felicity written in every line of his countenance; and sometimes meet him in a cross-street at noon, hurrying homeward, with a beef-steak on a wooden skewer, or a fresh fish, with a piece of tarred twine run through its gills. In the evening he rocks the cradle, and gets up in the night when the child cries. Like a Goth, of the Dark Ages, he consults his wife on all mighty matters, and looks upon her as a being of more than human goodness and wisdom. In short, the ladies all say he is a very domestic man, and makes a good husband; which, under the rose, is only a more polite way of saying he is hen-pecked. He is a Happy Man. I have another dear friend, who is a sexagenary bachelor. He has one of those well-oiled dispositions, which turn upon the hinges of the world without creaking. The hey-day of life is over with him; but his old age is sunny and chirping; and a merry heart still nestles in his tottering frame, like a swallow that builds in a tumble-down chimney. He is a professed Squire of Dames. The rustle of a silk gown is music to his ears, and his imagination is continuallylantern-led by some will-with-a-wisp in the shape of a lady’s stomacher. In his devotion to the fair sex, — the muslin, as he calls it, — he is the gentle flower of chivalry. It is amusing to see how quick he strikes into the scent of a lady’s handkerchief. When once fairly in pursuit, there is no such thing as throwing him out. His heart looks out at his eye; and his inward delight tingles down to the tail of his coat. He loves to bask in the sunshine of a smile; when he can breathe the sweet atmosphere of kid gloves and cambric handkerchiefs, his soul is in its element; and his supreme delight is to pass the morning, to use his own quaint language, ‘in making dodging calls, and wiggling round among the ladies!’ He is a lucky dog!”

  “And as a specimen of the class of Miserable Wretches, I suppose you will take me,” said Flemming, making an effort to enter into his friend’s humor. “Certainly I am wretched enough. You may make me the stuffed bear, — the specimen of this class.”

  “By no means,” replied Berkley; “you are not reduced so low. He only is utterly wretched, who is the slave of his own passions, or those of others. This, I trust, will never be your condition. Why so wan and pale, fond lover? Do you remember Sir John Suckling’s Song?

  ‘Why so wan and pale, fond lover;

  Pr’ythee why so pale?

  Will, if looking well can’t move her,

  Looking ill prevail?

  Pr’ythee why so pale?

  ‘Why so dull and mute, young sinner;

  Pr’ythee why so mute?

  Will, if speaking well can’t win her,

  Saying nothing do ‘t?

  Pr’ythee why so mute?

  ‘Quit, quit, for shame! this cannot move,

  This cannot take her!

  If of herself she do not love,

  Nothing will make her!

  The devil take her!’

  How do you like that?”

  “To you I say quit, quit for shame;” replied Flemming. “Why quote the songs of that witty and licentious age? Have you no better consolation to offer me? How many, many times must I tell you, that I bear the lady no ill-will. I do not blame her for not loving me. I desire her happiness, even at the sacrifice of my own.”

  “That is generous in you, and deserves a better fate. But you are so figurative in all you say, that a stranger would think you had no real feeling, — and only fancied yourself in love.”

  “Expression of feeling is different with different minds. It is not always simple. Some minds, when excited, naturally speak in figures and similitudes. They do not on that account feel less deeply. This is obvious in our commonest modes of speech. It depends upon the individual.”

  “Kyrie Eleëson!”

  “Well, abuse my figures of speech as much as you please. What I insist upon is, that you shall not abuse the lady. When did you ever hear me breathe a whisper against her?”

  “Oho! Now you speak like Launce to his dog!”

  Their conversation, which had begun so merrily, was here suddenly interrupted by a rattling peal of thunder, that announced a near-approaching storm. It was late in the afternoon, and the whole heaven black with low, trailing clouds. Still blacker the storm came sailing up majestically from the southwest, with almost unbroken volleys of distant thunder. The wind seemed to be storming a cloud redoubt; and marched onward with dust, and the green banners of the trees flapping in the air, and heavy cannonading, and occasionally an explosion, like the blowing up of a powder-wagon. Mingled with this was the sound of thunder-bells from a village not far off. They were all ringing dolefully to ward off the thunderbolt. At the entrance of the village stood a large wooden crucifix; around which was a crowd of priests and peasants, kneeling in the wet grass, by the roadside, with their hands and eyes lifted toheaven, and praying for rain. Their prayer was soon answered.

  The travellers drove on with the driving wind and rain. They had come from Landeck, and hoped to reach Innsbruck before midnight. Night closed in, and Flemming fell asleep with the loud storm overhead, and at his feet the roaring Inn, a mountain torrent leaping onward as wild and restless, as when it first sprang from its cradle in the soli
tudes of Engaddin; meet emblem of himself, thus rushing through the night. His slumber was long, but broken; and at length he awoke in terror; for he heard a voice pronounce in his ear distinctly these words;

  “They have brought the dead body.”

  They were driving by a churchyard at the entrance of a town; and among the tombs a dim lamp was burning before an image of the Virgin. It had a most unearthly appearance. Flemming almost feared to see the congregation of the dead go into the church and sing their midnight mass. He spoke to Berkley; but received no answer; he was in a deep sleep.

  “Then it was only a dream,” said he to himself; “yet how distinct the voice was! O, if we had spiritual organs, to see and hear things now invisible and inaudible to us, we should behold the whole air filled with the departing souls of that vast multitude which every moment dies, — should behold them streaming up like thin vapors heaven-ward, and hear the startling blast of the archangel’s trump sounding incessant through the universe and proclaiming the awful judgment day. Truly the soul departs not alone on its last journey, but spirits of its kind attend it, when not ministering angels; and they go in families to the unknown land! Neither in life nor in death are we alone.”

  He slept again at intervals; and at length, though long after midnight, reached Innsbruck between sleeping and waking; his mind filled with dim recollections of the unspeakably dismal night-journey; — the climbing of hills, and plunging into dark ravines; — the momentary rattling of the wheels over paved streets of towns, and the succeeding hollow rolling and tramping on the wetearth; — the blackness of the night; — the thunder and lightning and rain; the roar of waters, leaping through deep chasms by the road-side, and the wind through the mountain-passes, sounding loud and long, like the irrepressible laughter of the gods.

  The travellers on the morrow lingered not long in Innsbruck. They did not fail, however, to visit the tomb of Maximilian in the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, and gaze with some admiration upon the twenty-eight gigantic bronze statues of Godfrey of Bouillon, and King Arthur and Ernest the Iron-man, and Frederick of the Empty Pockets, kings and heroes, and others, which stand leaning on their swords between the columns of the church, as if guarding the tomb of the dead. These statues reminded Flemming of the bronze giants, which strike the hours on the belfry of San Basso, in Venice, and of the flail-armed monsters, that guarded the gateway of Angulaffer’s castle in Oberon. After gazing awhile at these motionless sentinels, they went forth, and strolled throughthe public gardens, with the jagged mountains right over their heads, and all around them tall, melancholy pines, like Tyrolese peasants, with shaggy hair; and at their feet the mad torrent of the Inn, sweeping with turbid waves through the midst of the town. In the afternoon they drove on towards Salzburg through the magnificent mountain-passes of Waidering and Unken.