This fraternal voice, coming to me athwart the music of the wavelets, suddenly brought a new world—perhaps the under-world—into my open soul. For a lightning flash of memory gleamed in a moment over all my dim being, reminding me that it was on this very night two-and-thirty years ago that I had made my entry upon this overclouded earth, shrouded with daily nights—and that this hour, between one and two o’clock, in which my brother was calling me into haven and to sleep, was the hour of my birth (which so often deprives man of both).
There come to us moments of twilight in which it seems as though day and night were in the act of dividing—as if we were in the very process of being created or annihilated; the stage of life and the spectators fly back out of view, our part is played out, we stand far off, in darkness and alone, but we have still got on our theatre dress, and we look at ourselves in it, and ask, “What is it that thou art, now, my me!” When we thus ask ourselves this, there is, beyond ourselves, nothing of great or of firm—everything has turned to an endless cloud of night (with rare and feeble gleams within it), which keeps falling lower and lower, and heavier with drops. Only high up above the cloud shines a resplendence—and that is God; and far beneath it a minute speck of light—and that is a human “Me”!
The heart is made of heavy earth, and therefore it cannot long endure such moments. I passed on to those sweeter seasons in which the full, tear-intoxicated heart neither can, nor will, do aught but simply weep. I had not the courage to drag my dear Victor down from the sublime region in which he was to my trifling pettinesses—but I asked him to remain beside me for a little time in this stillness which lay so silently upon the dark stream as it went flowing toward midnight and the south. Then I leant and pressed myself fondly to his side—and my little tears fell unseen into the great river—as though it had been the great stream of Time itself, into which all eyes drop their tears, and so many thousand hearts their blood-drops—for all which it neither swells nor flows the faster.
I thought as I gazed at the Rhine, “And thus, too, the dancing, billowy current of Life goes flowing on its course from out its source—hidden like the Nile’s. How little, as yet, have I done, or enjoyed! Our deserts, and our enjoyments, what petty things they are! Our metamorphoses are greater; our heads and our hearts go into the ground irrecognisable—altered a thousandfold—like the head of the man with the iron mask.[[76]] Ay! and did we but change! but we change so little in the earth, or even in ourselves. Every moment is to us the goal of all that have come before it. We take the seed of life for the harvest of it—the honey-dew on the ears for the sweet fruit—and we chew the flowers, like cattle! Ah! thou great GOD! what a night lieth around our sleep! we fall and rise with closed eyelids, and fly about blind, and in a deep slumber.”[[77]]
My hand was hanging into the water, and the cool ripples buoyed it up and down. I thought, “How straight and immovable the little light within us burns, amid the blasts of Nature’s storm! Everything around me contends and clashes together with gigantic might. The stream seizes upon the islands and the cliffs—the night-wind comes upon the river, and stalks across it, thrusting its wavelets back, and wages its strife with the forests—even up there in the tranquil blue, worlds are working against worlds—the eternal, endless mights flowing and rushing, like rivers, one against another, they come together in whirl and roar—and on the face of that eternal whirl the little worlds float eddying round the sun-vortex; nay, those shimmering constellations themselves rising zenithwards with that grand and gentle peace and calm—what are they but mountain ranges of raging sun-volcanoes, stretching into infinity beyond the reach of mind to follow. And yet the human spirit lies at rest amid this storm, peaceful as a quiet moon above a windy night. In me, at this moment, all is gentle peace. I see my own little life-brook running by me, falling, with all the rest, into the river of Time. The clear-eyed soul looks through the raging blood-rivers which are flowing round it, and through the storms which darken and obscure it, and sees, beyond them all, quiet meadows, gentle, peaceful waters, moon-shimmer, and a lovely, beautiful, tranquil, placid, peaceful angel slowly wandering there.” Yes, yes; within my soul there was a quiet Good Friday—wind-still, rain-free, and mild—neither cold nor over-warm—though shrouded in a tender cloud.
But a clear consciousness of rest is speedily the undoing thereof. I saw, floating near the island, three hyacinths which Clotilda had dropped into the wavelets as she went away. “Now, in this, thy birth-hour,” I said to myself, “the ocean of eternity is washing thousands of little hearts on to the stony shore of this world; how will it be with them one day when their birthday feast comes round? And what are your countless brothers who, with you, came thirty-two years ago into this vapour-ball, thinking now? Perhaps some terrible sorrow makes them think with bitterness of their first hour. Perhaps they sleep now—as I have slept—and must again—only deeper, deeper.” And then all my younger and older friends, now sleeping that deeper sleep, fell heavy upon my broken breast.
“I know, I think,” my Victor said, “what you are reflecting on so silently, and regretting so mutely.” I answered “No,” and then I told him all.
Then we went quickly back, and I put my arms about my other brother, and my heart went out in longing towards thee. At length we took our departure from this building-place of a more peaceful system of doctrine for our hearts—this quiet island; and the lofty hill—grand pedestal of the vases of our joy-flowers, chancel of the great temple, light-house tower in our haven of rest—seemed to gaze long after us, the hanging garden of our souls lying upon it in starry light.
And as we came to the shore, Hesperus, as star of the morning (spark which springs and shines so near the sun), rose up above the morning mists, and earlier than even the Aurora of morning, proclaimed his sire’s approach. And as we thought that he shines, too, as the star of evening upon our nights here below, and yet adorns the east, and the after-midnight hours with the first of the glittering pearls of dew, each said to his gladsome heart, “And so shall all the evening stars of this our life shine upon us as stars of morning at a future day.”
Think thou, too, of morning, my brother, when thou art looking upon the even; and when a sun is setting for thee, turn thee about and thou mayest see a moon rising in the east. The moon gives warrant that the sun is shining still—as Hope says, there still is happiness. But come now soon to thy Victor—and to