<h2 id="id02272" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
<h5 id="id02273">BY THE RHINE.</h5>
<p id="id02274" style="margin-top: 2em">In the two or three weeks that followed his meeting with Heliobas,
Alwyn made up his mind to leave London for a while. He was tired and
restless,—tired of the routine society more or less imposed upon
him,—restless because he had come to a standstill in his work—an
invisible barrier, over which his creative fancy was unable to take its
usual sweeping flight. He had an idea of seeking some quiet spot among
mountains, as far remote as possible from the travelling world of
men,—a peaceful place, where, with the majestic silence of Nature all
about him, he might plead in lover-like retirement with his refractory
Muse, and strive to coax her into a sweeter and more indulgent humor.
It was not that thoughts were lacking to him,—what he complained of
was the monotony of language and the difficulty of finding new, true,
and choice forms of expression. A great thought leaps into the brain
like a lightning flash; there it is, an indescribable mystery, warming
the soul and pervading the intellect, but the proper expression of that
thought is a matter of the deepest anxiety to the true poet, who, if he
be worthy of his vocation, is bound not only to proclaim it to the
world CLEARLY, but also clad in such a perfection of wording that it
shall chime on men's ears with a musical sound as of purest golden
bells. There are very few faultless examples of this felicitous
utterance in English or in any literature, so few, indeed, that they
could almost all be included in one newspaper column of ordinary print.
Keats's exquisite line:</p>
<p id="id02275"> "AEea's Isle was wondering at the moon"..</p>
<p id="id02276">in which the word "wondering" paints a whole landscape of dreamy
enchantment, and the couplet in the "Ode to a Nightingale," that speaks
with a delicious vagueness of</p>
<p id="id02277"> "Magic casements opening on the foam<br/>
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,"—<br/></p>
<p id="id02278">are absolutely unique and unrivalled, as is the exquisite alliteration
taken from a poet of our own day:</p>
<p id="id02279"> "The holy lark,<br/>
With fire from heaven and sunlight on his wing,<br/>
Who wakes the world with witcheries of the dark,<br/>
Renewed in rapture in the reddening air!"<br/></p>
<p id="id02280">Again from the same:</p>
<p id="id02281"> "The chords of the lute are entranced<br/>
With the weight of the wonder of things";<br/></p>
<p id="id02282">and</p>
<p id="id02283" style="margin-left: 6%; margin-right: 6%"> "his skyward notes
Have drenched the summer with the dews of song! …"</p>
<p id="id02284">this last line being certainly one of the most suggestive and beautiful
in all poetical literature. Such expressions have the intrinsic quality
of COMPLETENESS,—once said, we feel that they can never be said
again;—they belong to the centuries, rather than the seasons, and any
imitation of them we immediately and instinctively resent as an outrage.</p>
<p id="id02285">And Theos Alwyn was essentially, and above all things, faithful to the
lofty purpose of his calling,—he dealt with his art reverently, and
not in rough haste and scrambling carelessness,—if he worked out any
idea in rhyme, the idea was distinct and the rhyme was perfect,—he was
not content, like Browning, to jumble together such hideous and
ludicrous combinations as "high;—Humph!" and "triumph,"—moreover, he
knew that what he had to tell his public must be told comprehensively,
yet grandly, with all the authority and persuasiveness of incisive
rhetoric, yet also with all the sweetness and fascination of a
passioned love-song. Occupied with such work as this, London, with its
myriad mad noises and vulgar distractions, became impossible to
him,—and Villiers, his fidus Achates, who had read portions of his
great poem and was impatient to see it finished, knowing, as he did,
what an enormous sensation it would create when published, warmly
seconded his own desire to gain a couple of months complete seclusion
and tranquillity.</p>
<p id="id02286">He left town, therefore, about the middle of May and started across the
Channel, resolving to make for Switzerland by the leisurely and
delightful way of the Rhine, in order to visit Bonn, the scene of his
old student days. What days they had been!—days of dreaming, more than
action, for he had always regarded learning as a pastime rather than a
drudgery, and so had easily distanced his comrades in the race for
knowledge. While they were flirting with the Lischen or Gretchen of the
hour, he had willingly absorbed himself in study—thus he had attained
the head of his classes with scarce an effort, and, in fact, had often
found time hanging heavily on his hands for want of something more to
do. He had astonished the university professors—but he had not
astonished himself, inasmuch as no special branch of learning presented
any difficulties to him, and the more he mastered the more dissatisfied
he became. It had seemed such a little thing to win the honors of
scholarship! for at that time his ambition was always climbing up the
apparently inaccessible heights of fame,—fame, that he then imagined
was the greatest glory any human being could aspire to. He smiled as he
recollected this, and thought how changed he was since then! What a
difference between the former discontented mutability of his nature,
and the deep, unswerving calm of patience that characterized it now!
Learning and scholarship? these were the mere child's alphabet of
things,—and fame was a passing breath that ruffled for one brief
moment the on-rushing flood of time—a bubble blown in the air to break
into nothingness. Thus much wisdom he had acquired,—and what more? A
great deal more! he had won the difficult comprehension of HIMSELF; he
had grasped the priceless knowledge that man has no enemy save THAT
WHICH IS WITHIN HIM, and that the pride of a rebellious Will is the
parent Sin from which all others are generated. The old Scriptural
saying is true for all time, that through pride the angels fell; and it
is only through humility that they will ever rise again. Pride! the
proud Will that is left FREE by Divine Law, to work for itself and
answer for itself, and wreak upon its own head the punishment of its
own errors,—the Will that once voluntarily crushed down, in the dust
at the Cross of Christ, with these words truly drawn from the depths of
penitence, "Lord, not as I will, but as Thou wilt!" is straightway
lifted up from its humiliation, a supreme, stately Force, resistless,
miraculous, world-commanding;—smoothing the way for all greatness and
all goodness, and guiding the happy Soul from joy to joy, from glory to
glory, till Heaven itself is reached and the perfection of all love and
life begins. For true humility is not slavish, as some people imagine,
but rather royal, since, while acknowledging the supremacy of God, it
claims close kindred with Him, and is at once invested with all the
diviner virtues. Fame and wealth, the two perishable prizes for which
men struggle with one another in ceaseless and cruel combat, bring no
absolute satisfaction in the end—they are toys that please for a time
and then grow wearisome. But the conquering of Self is a battle in
which each fresh victory bestows a deeper content, a larger happiness,
a more perfect peace,—and neither poverty, sickness, nor misfortune
can quench the courage, or abate the ardor, of the warrior who is
absorbed in a crusade against his own worser passions. Egotism is the
vice of this age,—the maxim of modern society is "each man for
himself, and no one for his neighbor"—and in such a state of things,
when personal interest or advantage is the chief boon desired, we
cannot look for honesty in either religion, politics, or commerce. Nor
can we expect any grand work to be done in art or literature. When
pictures are painted and books are written for money only,—when
laborers take no pleasure in labor save for the wage it brings,—when
no real enthusiasm is shown in anything except the accumulation of
wealth,—and when all the finer sentiments and nobler instincts of men
are made subject to Mammon worship, is any one so mad and blind as to
think that good can come of it? Nothing but evil upon evil can accrue
from such a system,—and those who have prophetic eyes to see through
the veil of events can perceive, even now, the not far distant
end—namely, the ruin of the country that has permitted itself to
degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers,—and something worse
than ruin,—degradation!</p>
<p id="id02287">It was past eight in the evening when Alwyn, after having spent a
couple of days in bright little Brussels, arrived at Cologne. Most
travelers know to their cost how noisy, narrow, and unattractive are
the streets of this ancient Colonia Agrippina of the Romans,—how
persistent and wearying is the rattle of the vehicles over the rough,
cobbly stones—how irritating to the nerves is the incessant shrieking
whistle and clank of the Rhine steamboats as they glide in, or glide
out, from the cheerless and dirty pier. But at night, when these
unpleasant sounds have partially subsided, and the lights twinkle in
the shop-windows, and the majestic mass of the Cathedral casts its
broad shadow on the moonlit Dom-Platz, and a few soldiers, with
clanking swords and glittering spurs, come marching out from some dark
stone archway, and the green gleam of the river sparkles along in
luminous ripples,—then it is that a something weird and mystical
creeps over the town, and the glamour of ancient historical memories
begins to cling about its irregular buildings,—one thinks of the
legendary Three Kings, and believes in them, too,—of St. Ursula and
her company of virgins; of Marie de Medicis dying alone in that
tumbled-down house in the Stern-gasse,—of Rubens, who, it is said,
here first saw the light of this world,—of an angry Satan flinging his
Teufelstein from the Seven Mountains in an impotent attempt to destroy
the Dom; and gradually, the indestructible romantic spell of the Rhine
steals into the spirit of common things that were unlovely by day, and
makes the old city beautiful under the sacred glory of the stars.</p>
<p id="id02288">Alwyn dined at his hotel, and then, finding it still too early to
retire to rest, strolled slowly across the Platz, looking up at the
sublime God's Temple above him, the stately Cathedral, with its
wondrously delicate carvings and flying buttresses, on which the
moonlight glittered like little points of pale flame. He knew it of
old; many and many a time had he taken train from Bonn, for the sole
pleasure of spending an hour in gazing on that splendid "sermon in
stone,"—one of the grandest testimonies in the world of man's
instinctive desire to acknowledge and honor, by his noblest design and
work, the unseen but felt majesty of the Creator. He had a great
longing to enter it now, and ascended the steps with that intention;
but, much to his vexation, the doors were shut. He walked from the side
to the principal entrance; that superb western frontage which is so
cruelly blocked in by a dwarfish street of the commonest shops and
meanest houses,—and found that also closed against him. Disappointed
and sorry, he went back again to the side of the colossal structure,
and stood on the top of the steps, close to the central barred doors,
studying the sculptured saints in the niches, and feeling a sudden,
singular impression of extreme LONELINESS,—a sense of being shut out,
as it were, from some high festival in which he would gladly have taken
part.</p>
<p id="id02289">Not a cloud was in the sky, … the evening was one of the most
absolute calm, and a delicious warmth pervaded the air,—the warmth of
a fully declared and balmy spring. The Platz was almost deserted,—only
a few persons crossed it now and then, like flitting shadows,—and
somewhere down in one of the opposite streets a long way off, there was
a sound of men's voices singing a part-song. Presently, however, this
distant music ceased, and a deep silence followed. Alwyn still remained
in the sombre shade of the cathedral archway, arguing with himself
against the foolish and unaccountable depression that had seized him,
and watching the brilliant May moon soar up higher and higher in the
heavens; when,—all at once, the throbbing murmur of the great organ
inside the Dom startled him from pensive dreaminess into swift
attention. He listened,—the rich, round notes thundered through the
stillness with forceful and majestic harmony; anon, wierd tones, like
the passionate lament of Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen" floated around and
above him: then, a silvery chorus of young voices broke forth in solemn
unison:</p>
<p id="id02290">"Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! Kyrie Eleison!"</p>
<p id="id02291">A faint cold tremor crept through his veins,—his heart beat
violently,—again he vainly strove to open the great door. Was there a
choir practising inside at this hour of the night? Surely not!
Then,—from whence had this music its origin? Stooping, he bent his ear
to the crevice of the closed portal,—but, as suddenly as they had
begun, the harmonies ceased; and all was once more profoundly still.</p>
<p id="id02292">Drawing a long, deep breath, he stood for a moment amazed and lost in
thought—these sounds, he felt sure, were not of earth but of heaven!
they had the same ringing sweetness as those he had heard on the Field
of Ardath! What might they mean to him, here and now? Quick as a flash
the answer came—DEATH! God had taken pity upon his solitary earth
wanderings,—and the prayers of Edris had shortened his world-exile and
probation! He was to die! and that solemn singing was the warning,—or
the promise,—of his approaching end!</p>
<p id="id02293">Yes! it must be so, he decided, as, with a strange, half-sad peace at
his heart, he quietly descended the steps of the Dom,-he would perhaps
be permitted to finish the work he was at present doing,—and
then,—then, the poet-pen would be laid aside forever, chains would be
undone, and he would be set at liberty! Such was his fixed idea. Was he
glad of the prospect, he asked himself? Yes, and No! For himself he was
glad; but in these latter days he had come to understand the thousand
wordless wants and aspirations of mankind,—wants and aspirations to
which only the Poet can give fitting speech; he had begun to see how
much can be done to cheer and raise and ennoble the world by even ONE
true, brave, earnest, and unselfish worker,—and he had attained to
such a height in sympathetic comprehension of the difficulties and
drawbacks of others, that he had ceased to consider himself at all in
the question, either with regard to the Present or the immortal
Future,—he was, without knowing it, in the simple, unconsciously
perfect attitude of a Soul that is absolutely at one with God, and that
thus, in involuntary God-likeness, is only happy in the engendering of
happiness. He believed that, with the Divine help, he could do a
lasting good for his fellow-men,—and to this cause he was willing to
sacrifice everything that pertained to his own mere personal advantage.
But now,—now,—or so he imagined,—he was not to be allowed to pursue
his labors of love,—his trial was to end suddenly,—and he, so long
banished from his higher heritage, was to be restored to it without
delay,—restored and drawn back to the land of perfect loveliness where
Edris, his Angel, waited for him, his saint, his queen, his bride!</p>
<p id="id02294">A thrill of ecstatic joy rushed through him,—joy intermingled with an
almost supernal pain. For he had not as yet said enough to the
world,—the world of many afflictions,—the little Sorrowful Star
covered with toiling, anxious, deluded God-forgetting millions, in
every unit of which was a spark of Heavenly flame, a germ of the
spiritual essence that makes the angel, if only fostered aright.</p>
<p id="id02295">Lost in a deep reverie, his footsteps had led him unconsciously to the
Rhine bridge,—paying the customary fee, he walked about half-way
across it, and stood for a while listening to the incessant swift rush
of the river beneath him. Lights twinkled from the boats moored on
either side,—the moon poured down a wide shower of white beams on the
rapid flood,—the city, dusky and dream-like, crowned with the majestic
towers of the Dom, looked picturesquely calm and grand—it was a night
of perfect beauty and wondrous peace. And he was to die!—to die and
leave all this, the present fairness of the world,—he was to depart,
with, as he felt, his message half unspoken,—he was to be made
eternally happy, while many of the thousands he left behind were,
through ignorance, wilfully electing to be eternally miserable! A
great, almost divine longing to save ONE,—only ONE downward drifting
soul, possessed him,—and the comprehension of Christ's Sacrifice was
no longer a mystery! Yet he was so certain that death, sudden and
speedy closely, awaited him that he seemed to feel it in the very
air,—not like a coming chill of dread, but like the soft approach of
some holy seraph bringing benediction. It mattered little to him that
he was actually in the very plenitude of health and strength,—that
perhaps in all his life he had never felt such a keen delight in the
physical perfection of his manhood as now,—death, without warning and
at a touch, could smite down the most vigorous, and to be so smitten,
he believed, was his imminent destiny. And while he lingered on the
bridge, fancy-perplexed between grief and joy, a small window opened in
a quaint house that bent its bulging gables crookedly over the gleaming
water, and a girl, holding a small lamp, looked out for a moment. Her
face, fresh and smiling, was fair to see against the background of
dense shadow,—the light she carried flashed like a star,—and leaning
down from the lattice she sang half-timidly, half mischievously, the
first two or three bars of the old song.. "Du, du, liegst in mein
Herzen … !" "Ah! Gute Nacht, Liebchen!" said a man's voice below.</p>
<p id="id02296">"Gute Nacht! Schlafen sie wohl!"</p>
<p id="id02297">A light laugh, and the window closed, "Good-night! Sleep well!" Love's
best wish!—and for some sad souls life's last hope,—a "good-night and
sleep well!" Poor tired World, for whose weary inhabitants oftentimes
the greatest blessing is sleep! Good-night! sleep well! but the sleep
implies waking.—waking to a morning of pleasure or sorrow,—or labor
that is only lightened by,—Love! Love!—love divine,—love
human,—and, sweetest love of all for us, as Christ has taught when
both divine and human are mingled in one!</p>
<p id="id02298">Alwyn, glancing up at the clustering stars, hanging like pendent
fire-jewels above him, thought of this marvel-glory of Love,—this
celestial visitant who, on noiseless pinions, comes flying divinely
into the poorest homes, transfiguring common life with ethereal
radiance, making toil easy, giving beauty to the plainest faces and
poetry to the dullest brains. Love! its tremulous hand-clasp,—its
rapturous kiss,—the speechless eloquence it gives to gentle eyes!—the
grace it bestows on even the smallest gift from lover to beloved, were
such gift but a handful of meadow blossoms tied with some silken
threads of hair!</p>
<p id="id02299">Not for the poet creator of "Nourhulma" such love any more,—had he not
drained the cup of Passion to the dregs in the far Past, and tasted its
mixed sweetness and bitterness to no purpose save self-indulgence? All
that was over;—and yet, as he walked away from the bridge, back to his
hotel in the quiet moonlight, he thought what a transcendent thing Love
might be, even on earth, between two whose spirits were SPIRITUALLY
AKIN,—whose lives were like two notes played in tuneful
concord,—whose hearts beat echoing faith and tenderness to one
another,—and who held their love as a sacred bond of union—a gift
from God, not to be despoiled by that rough familiarity which surely
brings contempt. And then before his fancy appeared to float the
radiant visage of Edris, half-child, half-angel,—he seemed to see her
beautiful eyes, so pure, so clear, so unshadowed by any knowledge of
sin,—and the exquisite lines of a poet-contemporary, whose work he
specially admired, occurred to him with singular suggestiveness:</p>
<p id="id02300"> "Oh, thou'lt confess that love from man to maid<br/>
Is more than kingdoms,—more than light and shade<br/>
In sky-built gardens where the minstrels dwell,<br/>
And more than ransom from the bonds of Hell.<br/>
Thou wilt, I say, admit the truth of this,<br/>
And half relent that, shrinking from a kiss,<br/>
Thou didst consign me to mine own disdain,<br/>
Athwart the raptures of a vision'd bliss.<br/></p>
<p id="id02301"> "I'll seek no joy that is not linked with thine,<br/>
No touch of hope, no taste of holy wine,<br/>
And after death, no home in any star,<br/>
That is not shared by thee, supreme, afar<br/></p>
<p id="id02302"> As here thou'rt first and foremost of all things!<br/>
Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings<br/>
That wait on thought, when, in thy spirit-sway,<br/>
Thou dost invest a realm unknown to kings!"<br/></p>
<p id="id02303">Had not she, Edris, consigned him to his "own disdain, Athwart the
raptures of a visioned bliss?" Ay! truly and deservedly!—and this
disdain of himself had now reached its culminating point,—namely, that
he did not consider himself worthy of her love,—or worthy to do aught
than sink again into far spaces of darkness and perpetually
retrospective Memory, there to explore the uttermost depths of anguish,
and count up his errors one by one from the very beginning of life, in
every separate phase he had passed through, till he had penitently
striven his best to atone for them all! Christ had atoned! yes,—but
was it not almost base on his part to shield himself with that Divine
Light and do nothing further? He could not yet thoroughly grasp the
amazing truth that ONE ABSOLUTELY PURE act of faith in Christ, blots
out Past Sin forever,—it seemed too marvellous and great a boon!</p>
<p id="id02304">When he retired to rest that night he was fully and firmly PREPARED TO
DIE. With this expectation upon him he was nevertheless happy and
tranquil. The line—"Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings"
haunted him, and he repeated it over and over again without knowing
why. Wings! the brilliant shafts of radiance that part angels from
mortals,—wings, that, after all, are not really wings, but lambent
rays of living lightning, of which neither painter nor poet has any
true conception, . . long, dazzling rays such as encircled God's
maiden, Edris, with an arch of roseate effulgence, so that the very air
was sunset-colored in the splendor of her presence! How if she were a
wingless angel,—made woman?</p>
<p id="id02305">"Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings!" And with the name of his
angel-love upon his lips he closed his eyes and sank into a deep and
dreamless slumber.</p>
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