When Light and Shade, no longer single,
In genuine splendor intermingle,
And one in tales and poems sees
The world's eternal histories,--
Then will our whole inverted being
Before a secret word be fleeing.
The gardener, who converses with Henry, is the same old man who had formerly entertained Ofterdingen's father. The young girl, whose name is Cyane, is not his child, but the daughter of the Count of Hohenzollern. She came from the East; and though it was at an early age, yet she can recollect her home. She has long lived a strange life in the mountains, among which she was brought up by her deceased mother. She has lost in early life a brother, and has narrowly escaped death in a vaulted tomb; but an old physician rescued her in some peculiar way. She is gentle, and kind, and very familiar with the supernatural. She tells the poet her history as she had heard it once from her mother. She sends him to a distant cloister, whose monks seem to be a kind of spirit-colony; everything is like a mystic, magic lodge. They are the priests of the holy fire in youthful minds. He hears the distant chant of the brothers; in the church itself, he has a vision. With an old monk Henry converses about death and magic, has presentiment of death--and of the philosopher's stone; visits the cloister-garden and the churchyard, concerning which latter I find the following poem:--
Praise ye now our still carousals,
Gardens, chambers decked so gaily,
Household goods as for espousals,