"Then I saw my face in the waves, and it was a virgin's, full of high rapture and love. And the brook flowed with me, now through wheat-fields; now through a little, fragrant night, through which the sun was seen behind sparkling glow-worms; now through a twilight, wherein warbled a golden nightingale. Now the sun arched the tears of joy into a rainbow, and I sailed through, and behind me they sank down again, burning like dew. I drew nearer to the sun, and he wore already the harvest-wreath. 'It is already noon,' sang the hermits over my head.
"Slowly, as bees over honey-pastures, swam the thronging clouds in the dark blue, over the divine region. From the mountain-ridge a milky-way arched over, which sank into the sun. Bright lands unrolled themselves. Harps of light, strung with rays, rang in the fire; a tri-clang of three thunders agitated the land. A ringing storm-rain of dew and radiance filled with glitter the wide Eden; it dissolved in drops, like a weeping ecstasy. Pastoral songs floated through the pure blue air, and a few lingering, rosy clouds danced out of the tempest after the tones. Then the near morning-sun looked faintly out of a pale lily-garland, and the hermits sang up there, 'O bliss, O bliss! the evening blooms!' There was stillness, and twilight. The worlds held themselves in silence round the sun, and encircled him with their fair giants, resembling the human form, but higher and holier. As on the earth the noble form of man creeps downward by the dark mirror-chain of animal life, so did it, overhead there, mount up along a line of pure, bright, free gods, sent from God. The worlds touched the sun, and dissolved upon it; the sun, too, fell to pieces, in order to flow down into the land of love, and became a sea of radiance. Then the fair gods and the fair goddesses stretched out their arms towards each other, and touched each other, trembling for love; but, like vibrating strings, they disappeared from sight in their blissful trembling, and their being became only an invisible melody; and the tones sang to each other, 'I am with thee, and am with God'; and others sang, 'The sun was God.'
"Then the golden fields glistened with innumerable tears of joy, which had fallen during the invisible embrace; eternity grew still, and the breezes slept, and only the lingering, rosy light of the dissolved sun softly stirred the flowers.
"I was alone, looked round, and my lonely heart longed dyingly for a death. Then the white world with the veil passed slowly up the milky-way; like a soft moon, it still glimmered a little; then it sank down from heaven upon the holy land, and melted away upon the ground; only the high veil remained. Then the veil withdrew itself into the ether, and an exalted, godlike virgin, great as the other goddesses, stood upon the earth and in heaven. All rosy radiance of the swimming sun collected in her, and she burned in a robe of evening-red. All invisible voices addressed her, and asked, 'Who is the Father of men, and their Mother, and their Brother, and their Sister, and their Lover, and their Beloved, and their Friend?' The virgin lifted steadfastly her blue eye, and said, 'It is God!' And thereupon she looked at me tenderly out of the high splendors, and said, 'Thou knowest me not, Albano, for thou art yet living.' 'Unknown virgin,' said I, 'I gaze with the pangs of a measureless love upon thy exalted countenance. I have surely known thee; name thy name.' 'If I name it, thou wilt awake,' said she. 'Name it!' I cried. She answered, and I awoke."
100. CYCLE.
"Thou canst surely keep awake and travel one night?" With this question, his father hastily conducted him to the carriage that stood ready for the journey, in order to steal him away while yet in the midst of the glowing dream, with his recollections lulled to slumber, and in order especially to get the start of the pale bride, who this very night, by the same road, was to go home to the last heritage of humanity. "In the carriage thou shalt hear all," replied Gaspard to his son's mild question respecting their destination. Still entranced with the light of the shining land of dreams, Albano willingly and blindly obeyed. He still saw Liana in lofty, divine form, standing on the evening-red ground of the sun, which was bespangled with the dew-drops of joy, and his eye, full of splendor, reached not down into the earth-cellar, and to the narrow cast-off chrysalis-shell of the liberated and soaring Psyche.
Schoppe accompanied him to the torch-lighted carriage, but in perfect silence, in order not to awaken his heart by intimating the destination of the journey. He pressed with warmth the hand of the beautiful and beloved youth, which returned the pressure, and said nothing but "We shall see each other again, brother!" Thereupon, honored by no parting look from the imperious father, he stepped back with emotion from his friend, who continued to wave his warm farewells; and the carriage rolled off, and, leaving a long gleam of torch-light behind it, flew out into the high, starry night.
Freshly and meaningly did the glimmering creation broaden out before the convalescent. Saturn was just rising, and the god of time set himself, as a soft, flashing jewel, in the glittering magic belt of heaven. With sealed eyes was the unconscious youth conducted down from the pastoral cottage of his early years, and out of the shepherd's vale of his first love, away where the great, eternal constellations of art beckoned, into the divine land, where the dark ether of heaven is golden, and the lofty ruins of the earth are clothed with grace, and the nights are days. No eye looked over to the heights of Blumenbühl, from which, at this very moment, a black train of coaches was passing slowly down, with upright-burning funeral torches, like a moving shadow-realm, to convey the still, good heart, wherein Albano and God lived, with its dead wounds, to the soft place of rest. Flaming rolled the torch-carriage up the mountain-road towards Italy.
Tearless and far-gazing, Albano's eye rested on the glimmering, ceaselessly moving fountain-wheel of time, eternally drawing up constellations in the east, and pouring them out in the west; and his childlike hand gently clasped his father's.
