The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut, now standing locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees were folding, with clammy half-formed leaves, over the thick intertwisted tangles of the bushes. The Spring was standing, like a conqueror, with Winter at his feet. In the blue pond, now bloodless, a dusky evening sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters were moistening the flower-beds. The silver sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the East, and, falling down, were extinguished in the red sea of the West.
The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees, and gave tones to the acacia-grove; and the tones called to the pair who had first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think of what is past, and of my withering and your own; be holy as Eternity, and weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also!" And the wet-eyed bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and laid his soul, like a flower, on her heart, and said: "Best Thiennette, I am unspeakably happy, and would say much, but cannot! Ah, thou Dearest, we will live like angels, like children together! Surely I will do all that is good to thee; two years ago I had nothing, no, nothing; ah, it is through thee, best love, that I am happy. I call thee Thou, now, thou dear good soul!" She drew him closer to her, and said, though without kissing him: "Call me Thou always, Dearest!"
And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into the magic-dusky garden, he took off his hat; first, that he might internally thank God, and, secondly, because he wished to look into this fairest evening sky.
They reached the blazing, rustling, marriage-house, but their softened hearts sought stillness; and a foreign touch, as in the blossoming vine, would have disturbed the flower-nuptials of their souls. They turned rather, and winded up into the churchyard to preserve their mood. Majestic on the groves and mountains stood the Night before man's heart, and made that also great. Over the white steeple-obelisk the sky rested bluer, and darker; and, behind it, wavered the withered summit of the May-pole with faded flag. The son noticed his father's grave, on which the wind was opening and shutting, with harsh noise, the little door of the metal cross, to let the year of his death be read on the brass plate within. As an overpowering sadness seized his heart with violent streams of tears, and drove him to the sunk hillock, he led his bride to the grave, and said: "Here sleeps he, my good father; in his thirty-second year he was carried hither to his long rest. O thou good, dear father, couldst thou today but see the happiness of thy son, like my mother! But thy eyes are empty, and thy breast is full of ashes, and thou seest us not." He was silent. The bride wept aloud; she saw the moldering coffins of her parents open, and the two dead arise and look round for their daughter, who had stayed so long behind them, forsaken on the earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered: "O beloved, I have neither father nor mother. Do not forsake me!"
O thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for it, on the day when thy soul is full of joyful tears and needs a bosom whereon to shed them.
And with this embracing at a father's grave, let this day of joy be holily concluded.
ROME[2]
From Titan (1800)
By JEAN PAUL