23. CYCLE.
IT arises not merely from my courtesy towards a reading posterity, my dear Zesara, but also from a real courtesy toward thee, that I so faithfully transcribe all acts in this pastoral of thy life; in thy later days these melodious ones shall echo in thy ears refreshingly out of my book, and in the evening, after thy labors, thou wilt read nothing more gladly than my labors here.
The following night deserves its Cycle. Soon after Whitsuntide he was tormented with weekly medical notes upon a new malady of poor Liana, which had begun, just as if he had guessed right, on Sacrament-day. He heard that she was living or suffering in Lilar, the pleasure- and residence-garden of the old Prince, in company with her brother, of whose silence the Vienna master had just got up to his thousand and first reason. Now, around Lilar, although not far from Pestitz, his father had drawn no chains of prohibition. Liana's night-lamp might, perhaps, glimmer a welcome, or at all events her harmonica sound one,—yes, her brother might haply be still walking round in the garden,—the June night was, besides, serene and magnificent. Ah, in short, he started.
It was late and still; far out of the sleeping village, of which all the lights were extinguished, he could still catch the flute-pieces of the clock in the castle upon the Pestitz mountain. It was a quickener to him, that his road lay for some distance along the Linden-city causeway. He fixed his eyes steadily on the western mountains, where the stars seemed to fall to her like white blossoms. Up on the distant height, the Hercules' cross-way, the right arm ran downward and wound along through groves and meadows to the blooming Lilar.
March on, drunk with joy, full of young, light images, through the Italian night, which glimmers and breathes its fragrance around thee, and which, as over Hesperia, not far from the warm moon, hangs out a golden evening-star[42] in the blue west, as if over the dwelling of the beloved soul! To thee and thy young eyes the stars as yet only shed down hopes, no remembrances; thou hast in thy hand a plucked, stiff apple-twig, full of red buds, which, like unhappy beings, become too pale when they bloom out; but thou makest not, as yet, any such applications thereof as we do.
Now he stood glowing and trembling in a dell before Lilar, which, however, a singular round wood, of walks lined with trees, still hid from his view. The wood grew up in the middle to a blooming mount, which was embosomed and encircled so curiously with broad sunflowers, festoons of cherries, and glancing silver-poplars and rose-trees, that it seemed, by the picturesque ignes-fatui of the moon, to be a single, enormous kettle-tree, full of fruits and blossoms. Albano was fain to ascend its summit, and be, as it were, on the observatory of the heaven, or Lilar, spread out below; he found at last in the wood an open alley.
The foliage, with its spiral alleys, wound him round into a deeper and deeper night, through which not the moon, but only the heat lightnings, could break, with which the warm, cloudless heavens were overcharged. The magic circles of the mount rose ever smaller and smaller out of the leaves into the blossoms,—two naked children, among myrtles, had twined their arms caressingly about each other's bent head,—they were statues of Cupid and Psyche,—rosy night-butterflies were licking, with their short tongues, the honey-dew from the leaves, and the glowworms, like sparks struck off from the glow of evening, went trailing like gold threads around the rose-bushes; he climbed amid summits and roots behind the aromatic balustrade toward heaven; but the little spiral alley running round with him hung before the stars purple night-violets, and hid the deep gardens with orange summits; at length he sprang from the highest round of his Jacob's-ladder, with all his senses, out into an uncovered, living heaven; a light hill-top, only fringed with variegated flower-cups, received and cradled him under the stars, and a white altar gleamed brightly beside him in the moonlight.
But gaze down, fiery man, with thy fresh heart, full of youth, on the magnificent, immeasurable, enchanted Lilar! A second twilight-world, such as tender tones picture to us, an open morning-dream spreads out before thee, with high triumphal arches, with whispering labyrinthine walks, with islands of the blest; the pure snow of the sunken moon lingers now only on the groves and triumphal gates, and on the silver-dust of the fountain-water, and the night, flowing off from all waters and vales, swims over the Elysian fields of the heavenly realm of shadows, in which, to earthly memory, the unknown forms appear like Otaheite-shores, pastoral countries, Daphnian groves, and poplar-islands of our present world,—wondrous lights glide through the dark foliage, and all is one lovely, magic confusion. What mean those high, open doors or arches, and the pierced groves and the ruddy splendor behind them, and a white child sleeping among orange-lilies and gold-flowers, from whose cups delicate flames trickle,[43] as if angels had flown too near over them? The lightnings reveal swans, sleeping on the waves under clouds drunk with light, and their flaming trains blaze like gold after them in among the thick trees,[44] as goldfishes turn their burning backs out of the water,—and even around thy summit, Albano, the great eyes of the sunflowers turn on thee their fiery looks, as if kindled by the sparks of the glowworms.
"And in this kingdom of light," thought Albano, trembling, "the still angel of my future hides himself and glorifies it, when he appears. O where dwellest thou, good Liana? In that white temple? or in the arbor between the rose-fields? or up there in the green Arcadian summer-house?" If love makes even pangs to be pleasures, and exalts the shadowy sphere of the earth into a starry sphere, O what an enchantment will it lend to delight! Albano could not possibly, in this outer and inner splendor, think of Liana as sick; he represented to himself just now only the blissful future, and with a yearning embrace knelt down at the altar; he looked toward the glittering garden, and pictured to himself how it would be when he should one day tread with her every island of this Eden,—when holy Nature should lay his and her hands in one another upon these altar-steps,—when he should sketch to her on the way the Hesperia of life, the pastoral land of first love, and then its holy exultation and its sweet tears, and how he should not then be able to look round into the eyes of that most tender heart, because he should already know that they were overflowing with bliss. Just then he saw, in the moonshine above the triumphal arches, two illuminated forms move like spirits; but his glowing soul went on with its painting, and he imagined to himself how, when the nightingales trilled in this Eden, he should look up to her and say, in a delirium of love, "O Liana, I bore thee long ago in my heart,—once upon that mountain, when thou wast sick."...
This startled him, and he came to himself; he was indeed on the mountain,—but he had forgotten the sickness. Now, kneeling, he threw his arms around the cold stone, and prayed for her whom he so loved, and who, also, surely had prayed here; and his head sank, weeping and darkened, upon the altar. He heard human steps approaching down below on the winding hill, and, with trembling joy, he thought it might be his father; but he boldly remained on his knees. At last there stepped in across the flowery border a tall, bent old man, like the noble bishop of Spangenberg; his calm countenance smiled full of eternal love, and no pains appeared upon it, and it seemed to fear none. The old man, in mute gladness, pressed the youth's hands together as a sign that he should pray on, knelt down beside him, and that ecstasy to which frequent prayer transfigures one spread its saintly radiance over that form full of years. Singular was this union and this silence. The fragment of the moon, which was all that yet jutted above the earth, burned darklier, and at last went down; then the old man rose, and, with that easiness of transition which comes from being habituated to devotion, put questions about Albano's name and residence; after the answer, he merely said, "Pray on thy way to God, the all-gracious,—and go to sleep before the storm comes, my son!"
Never can that voice and form pass away out of Albano's heart; the soul of the old man peered, like the sun in an annular eclipse, shining, full circle, out over the dark body, which strove to hide it with its earth-mould. Deeply struck, to the very roots of his nerves, Albano rose, and the broadening flashes of the lightning showed him now, down below near the enchanted garden, a second dark, entangled, horrible one, a sort of Tartarus to the Elysium. He departed with singular and conflicting emotions,—the future, and the beings therein, appeared to him, on his way, to stand very near, and already to run to and fro like theatre lights behind the transparent curtain,—and he longed for some weighty enterprise as a refreshment for his inflamed heart; but he had to rest his head, full of this heath-fire, on the pillow, and the high thunder, like a god of the night, mingled with its first claps in his dreams.