"Oh, help me, clouds with the silver lining!" But the clouds rolled on as if wholly unconscious of the wonderful shapes they assumed at every turn—ever changing, and adorned anew with glittering gold and gleaming silver. And all the while the sea was roaring just as if it had no memory whatever of Johannes.
And when he had cried "Help me, clouds with the silver lining!" the words clung to his mind, and, like shining angels, they beckoned other, sister words, still lingering in the depths of his soul, to come and join them. And so they came—one after another, in twinkling file, and fell into line. Their faces seemed more serious than did ever those of his own words.
"Help, oh, help me, ye silver-lined clouds!
Oh, save me, sun and stormy sea!
To thee I fly from stifling haunts of men.
Life, with its frightful, crimson-flaming hands,
Has laid its hold on me.
Once I was thy friend and confidant—
At home in thy mysterious loneliness.
I explored without fear thy boundless space
And celestial mansions builded I there
With the mere light of stars, and the waves of wind.
Peace I found in thy grandeur stern,
And rest in thy bright expanse.
Now, life sweeps me on with its current swift,
And a seething volcano I find where erst
Was an ocean serene of exalted delights.
Alas! thou doest rest in thy splendor immersed—
As cool as a lion licking his paws.
All slowly the cloud is transformed,
Letting the light stream through,
And the tossing main with sparks is clad,
As if with a golden coat of mail.
Ah, beautiful world! Untrue and unreal
Thou glidest away 'neath my anguished eyes.
The ocean roars ever, and silent are sun and clouds.
Sadly, I see the strange daylight fail.
It leaves me alone with still stranger night.
Oh! may I yet find there my Father's spirit,
That dwells beyond sun and sea and clouds?
Must I join with the hapless, hopeless throng
And bind my sorrowful fate to theirs,
Until the Great Leveler bring surcease?"
What Johannes meant by the "Great Leveler" he did not himself know at first. Neither did he at all realize that he had composed something better than formerly. But in the night he understood that it was Death he had meant. And he knew, also, that something within him had opened to the light, like an unfolding flower.
He felt that the verses might be sung like a song, but he could not hear the melody—or but faintly—like wind-wafted tones from the farthest distance. At night, he heard in his dreams the full strain, but in the morning he had entirely forgotten it. And Marjon was not there to help him.
You must remember that Little Johannes was no longer so very little. Nearly four years had passed since that morning when he had waked up in the dunes, with the little gold key.
He could not refrain from reading the poem to the countess on the following day. The making of it—the writing and rewriting—had calmed the unrest out of which it had come. He was curious, now, to learn what others would say of it—above all, the one who was ever in his thoughts.
"Ah, yes!" said she, after he had read it aloud, "life is fearful! And that 'surcease' is all that I long for. I fully agree with you."
This remark, however kind the intention of the speaker, gave Johannes, to his own astonishment, small pleasure. He would have preferred to hear something different.
"Do you think it good?" he asked, with a vague feeling that he really ought not to ask the question, because he had been so very much in earnest over the verses. And when one is deeply in earnest about anything one does not ask if it is good; no more than he would ask if he had wept beautifully. But yet he would have liked, so well, to know what she thought.