"Consolation seek with me!
None of passion's fancies learning,
No regrets, no sighs, no yearning—
Meditation first shall be."
And the poem ends with this solemn and beautiful stanza:—
"In the realm to death made blest,
Lethe's waters round them closing,
These two lovers sat reposing,
As for everlasting rest.
All is silent as can be,
And the vaulted skies up yonder
Swarm with many a starry wonder,
While the moon sinks in the sea."
In this dreamy attitude, at the feet of the goddess of death, let us leave the noble poet.
There he sits, while his most beautiful poetic visions glide in nebulous form before his eyes. He sees the River Styx. Venus, Urania, and Endymion sail in a boat down the stream, while the crown which Venus wears casts a brilliant starry sheen over the gloomy waves and shores. He sees Amor and Psyche blissfully floating by in lofty Kassiopeia and proud Orion; he descries Adam and Alma gliding past, all closely wrapped in the purifying flames of purgatory; he beholds Alexander kneeling before Kalanus, and the slender, refined form of the Indian, with the white bandage about his brow, and singing his swan's song, ascend from the funeral pyre through the smoke and the black clouds to Brahma.
"At the feet of her, his goddess,
Happy now he sits and dreams;
All aglow death's kingdom seems,"
while his works survive him and render his name immortal.
There was always a great deal of sky in his paintings, but his name will be most enduringly united with that part of his pictures which portrays earth and the earthly.
[1] Now the Empress of Russia.