At last the dark slags floated away from before the silvery glance of the rising moon; she stood like an ineffable rapture higher in the night of the heavens, painted out of the background into the foreground. The frogs pierced the night like a mill, and their continuous, many-voiced din had the effect of a silence. O what man whom death had changed into an angel flying over the earth, would not have fallen down upon it, and under the earthly foliage and on the earthly ground, silvered over by the moon (as by the sun it is gilded over), and thought upon the heaven he had left behind and upon his old human pastures, his old spring-times down below here, and of his former hopes among the blossoms?
Ye reviewers! forgive me this once and let me go on! At last we stepped into a gondola as into a Charon's bark, and rapturously and reluctantly cleared the bushy shore and the reflection streaming from the water upon its leaves. The greatest enjoyment, the highest gratitude, send, not horizontally but vertically, their hidden and grasping roots into the heart; we could not therefore say much to Fenk, who was not to go away to-night from the scene of joy. Thou friend! dearer to me than all others, perhaps when all is more quiet and the moon is higher and purer, and the night more eternal, toward morning, thou wilt begin to weep over both--what the earth has given thee and what it has taken away. Beloved! if thou doest it now, at this moment--then I shall surely do so too!...
With our first step into the boat the Alp-horns (probably under Fenk's direction) again pierced the night; every tone rang through it like a past, every chord like a sigh for a spring-time of the other world; the night-mist played and smoked over woods and mountains and drew itself out, like the boundary lines of men, like morning-clouds of the future world, around our spring-awakened earth. The Alp-horns died away, like the voice of first love, in our ears and grew louder in our souls; the rudder and boat cut the water in two into a gleaming milky way; every wave was a trembling star; the fluctuating water reflected tremulously the moon, which we would rather have multiplied a thousand-fold than doubled, and whose soft lily-face bloomed still paler and more sweetly under the waves. Encircled with four heavens--the one in the blue above, on the earth, in the water and within us--we sailed on through the swimming blossoms. Beata sat at one end of the boat, facing the other, the moon, and the friend of her tender soul--her glance glided easily up and down between the moon and him--he was thinking of his morrow's journey and of his longer tour as ambassador, and begged us all for written souvenirs, that he might always have a good abiding among us as now, and reminded Beata of her promise to give him one also. She had already written it and gave it to him to-day at their parting. The happy day, the happy evening, the heavenly night filled her eyes with a thousand souls and with two tears that lingered there. She covered and dried one eye with her white handkerchief and looked upon Gustavus with the other, with a glance as pure and calm as an image in a mirror.... Thou fanciedst, thou good soul, that thou wast also hiding thy open eye!
At last--O thou everlasting, unceasing At Last!--our silvery course through the waves broke also upon its shore. The opposite one lay there deserted and overshadowed. Ottomar tore himself away in the most melancholy inspiration and amidst the dying echoes of the Swiss tones my renewed friend said: "It is all over again--all tones die away--all waves sink to rest--the fairest hours strike their last and the sands of life run out. There is surely and absolutely nothing, thou vast heaven above us, that can fill or bless us! Farewell! I shall take leave of you all along my way."
The Alpine echoes sounded back far into the night and sank to a murmuring breath, which resembled a memory, not out of youth, but out of the depths of childhood. We reeled, filled full of enjoyment, through dew-dripping bushes and through drooping, drowsy and dew-drunken meadows, from which we plucked slumbering flowers, in order to see on the morrow their folded form in sleep. We thought upon the sunless paths of this day's morning; we passed along without a sound before the little Lilliputian house and garden, and the children and the bread-baking housewife were clasped and entwined in the deathlike arms of slumber. The hours had rolled the moon, like a stone of Sysiphus, up the steep of heaven, and let it roll down again.[[97]] In the east stars rose, in the west stars set, in mid-heaven little starlets sent off from the earth exploded into fragments--but eternity stood dumb and great beside God, and all passed away before it and all arose before its face. The field of life and of infinity hung down near and low above us, like one flash, and all that is great, all that is immortal, all the dead and all angels lifted the human spirits into their blue circle and sank to meet it....
At last, I taking the hand of my sister and Gustavus that of Beata, we entered our little Lilienbad stiller, fuller, holier, than we had left it in the morning. Gustavus took leave of me first, saying: "In five days we meet again." He led Beata to her cottage, which blazed in Luna's silver flames. The white summit of the pyramid on the hermitage mount glimmered across out of the depth of its seclusion over the long green avenue to the vale and through the darkness of the night. Beside this pyramid the two happy ones had first given each other their hearts, beside it a friend rested from the toil of life, and its white peak pointed to the place where blooms a fairer spring. They heard the leaves of the terrace whisper, and the Tree of Life under which after set of sun, they had for the second time given their souls to each other.... O ye two good and over-happy beings! at this moment a good seraph is drawing up for you a silvery minute out of the sea of joy which lies in a fairer earth--on this fleeting drop glances the whole perspective of the Eden wherein the angel is; the minute will run down to you, but ah! so soon will it pass by!
Beata gave Gustavus, as a hint for departure, the desired leaf--he pressed the hand from which it came to his mute lips--he could not speak either thanks or farewell--he took her other hand and all within him cried and repeated: "She is truly once more thine and remains so forever," and he must needs weep over his bliss. Beata looked into his overflowing heart, and hers ran over into a tear and yet she knew it not: but when the tear of the holiest eye trickled down the rosy cheek and hung on that rose-leaf with trembling glimmer--when his locking and her locked hands could not wipe it away--when with his flaming face, with his too blissful, bursting heart, he was about to wipe the tear, and bent toward the fairest object on earth like a rapture bending toward virtue, and touched her face with his--then did the angel who loves the earth draw the two purest lips together into an inextinguishable kiss--then did all trees sink out of sight, all suns passed away, all heavens fled, and Gustavus held heaven and earth in a single heart clasped to his breast;--then didst thou, seraph, pass into the beating hearts and gavest them the flames of the immortal love--and thou heardst the breathed sounds fly from the hot lips of Gustavus: "O thou dear! thou undeserved one! and so good! so good!"
Enough--the lofty moment has flown by--the earthly day sends up already its morning-redness into the heavens--let my heart return to its rest and every other heart likewise!