<h2><SPAN name="chap18"></SPAN>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
<p class="poem">
“In the wind’s uproar, the sea’s raging grim,<br/>
And the sighs that are born in him.”<br/>
H<small>EINE</small>.</p>
<p class="poem">
“From dreams of bliss shall men awake<br/>
One day, but not to weep:<br/>
The dreams remain; they only break<br/>
The mirror of the sleep.”<br/>
J<small>EAN</small> P<small>AUL</small>, <i>Hesperus</i>.</p>
<p>How I got through this dreary part of my travels, I do not know. I do not think
I was upheld by the hope that any moment the light might break in upon me; for
I scarcely thought about that. I went on with a dull endurance, varied by
moments of uncontrollable sadness; for more and more the conviction grew upon
me that I should never see the white lady again. It may seem strange that one
with whom I had held so little communion should have so engrossed my thoughts;
but benefits conferred awaken love in some minds, as surely as benefits
received in others. Besides being delighted and proud that <i>my</i> songs had
called the beautiful creature to life, the same fact caused me to feel a
tenderness unspeakable for her, accompanied with a kind of feeling of property
in her; for so the goblin Selfishness would reward the angel Love. When to all
this is added, an overpowering sense of her beauty, and an unquestioning
conviction that this was a true index to inward loveliness, it may be
understood how it came to pass that my imagination filled my whole soul with
the play of its own multitudinous colours and harmonies around the form which
yet stood, a gracious marble radiance, in the midst of <i>its</i> white hall of
phantasy. The time passed by unheeded; for my thoughts were busy. Perhaps this
was also in part the cause of my needing no food, and never thinking how I
should find any, during this subterraneous part of my travels. How long they
endured I could not tell, for I had no means of measuring time; and when I
looked back, there was such a discrepancy between the decisions of my
imagination and my judgment, as to the length of time that had passed, that I
was bewildered, and gave up all attempts to arrive at any conclusion on the
point.</p>
<p>A gray mist continually gathered behind me. When I looked back towards the
past, this mist was the medium through which my eyes had to strain for a vision
of what had gone by; and the form of the white lady had receded into an unknown
region. At length the country of rock began to close again around me, gradually
and slowly narrowing, till I found myself walking in a gallery of rock once
more, both sides of which I could touch with my outstretched hands. It narrowed
yet, until I was forced to move carefully, in order to avoid striking against
the projecting pieces of rock. The roof sank lower and lower, until I was
compelled, first to stoop, and then to creep on my hands and knees. It recalled
terrible dreams of childhood; but I was not much afraid, because I felt sure
that this was my path, and my only hope of leaving Fairy Land, of which I was
now almost weary.</p>
<p>At length, on getting past an abrupt turn in the passage, through which I had
to force myself, I saw, a few yards ahead of me, the long-forgotten daylight
shining through a small opening, to which the path, if path it could now be
called, led me. With great difficulty I accomplished these last few yards, and
came forth to the day. I stood on the shore of a wintry sea, with a wintry sun
just a few feet above its horizon-edge. It was bare, and waste, and gray.
Hundreds of hopeless waves rushed constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon
a beach of great loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both
directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of gray; nothing
for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of the breaking, and the moan
of the retreating wave. No rock lifted up a sheltering severity above the
dreariness around; even that from which I had myself emerged rose scarcely a
foot above the opening by which I had reached the dismal day, more dismal even
than the tomb I had left. A cold, death-like wind swept across the shore,
seeming to issue from a pale mouth of cloud upon the horizon. Sign of life was
nowhere visible. I wandered over the stones, up and down the beach, a human
imbodiment of the nature around me. The wind increased; its keen waves flowed
through my soul; the foam rushed higher up the stones; a few dead stars began
to gleam in the east; the sound of the waves grew louder and yet more
despairing. A dark curtain of cloud was lifted up, and a pale blue rent shone
between its foot and the edge of the sea, out from which rushed an icy storm of
frozen wind, that tore the waters into spray as it passed, and flung the
billows in raving heaps upon the desolate shore. I could bear it no longer.</p>
<p>“I will not be tortured to death,” I cried; “I will meet it
half-way. The life within me is yet enough to bear me up to the face of Death,
and then I die unconquered.”</p>
<p>Before it had grown so dark, I had observed, though without any particular
interest, that on one part of the shore a low platform of rock seemed to run
out far into the midst of the breaking waters.</p>
<p>Towards this I now went, scrambling over smooth stones, to which scarce even a
particle of sea-weed clung; and having found it, I got on it, and followed its
direction, as near as I could guess, out into the tumbling chaos. I could
hardly keep my feet against the wind and sea. The waves repeatedly all but
swept me off my path; but I kept on my way, till I reached the end of the low
promontory, which, in the fall of the waves, rose a good many feet above the
surface, and, in their rise, was covered with their waters. I stood one moment
and gazed into the heaving abyss beneath me; then plunged headlong into the
mounting wave below. A blessing, like the kiss of a mother, seemed to alight on
my soul; a calm, deeper than that which accompanies a hope deferred, bathed my
spirit. I sank far into the waters, and sought not to return. I felt as if once
more the great arms of the beech-tree were around me, soothing me after the
miseries I had passed through, and telling me, like a little sick child, that I
should be better to-morrow. The waters of themselves lifted me, as with loving
arms, to the surface. I breathed again, but did not unclose my eyes. I would
not look on the wintry sea, and the pitiless gray sky. Thus I floated, till
something gently touched me. It was a little boat floating beside me. How it
came there I could not tell; but it rose and sank on the waters, and kept
touching me in its fall, as if with a human will to let me know that help was
by me. It was a little gay-coloured boat, seemingly covered with glistering
scales like those of a fish, all of brilliant rainbow hues. I scrambled into
it, and lay down in the bottom, with a sense of exquisite repose.</p>
<p>Then I drew over me a rich, heavy, purple cloth that was beside me; and, lying
still, knew, by the sound of the waters, that my little bark was fleeting
rapidly onwards. Finding, however, none of that stormy motion which the sea had
manifested when I beheld it from the shore, I opened my eyes; and, looking
first up, saw above me the deep violet sky of a warm southern night; and then,
lifting my head, saw that I was sailing fast upon a summer sea, in the last
border of a southern twilight. The aureole of the sun yet shot the extreme
faint tips of its longest rays above the horizon-waves, and withdrew them not.
It was a perpetual twilight. The stars, great and earnest, like
children’s eyes, bent down lovingly towards the waters; and the reflected
stars within seemed to float up, as if longing to meet their embraces. But when
I looked down, a new wonder met my view. For, vaguely revealed beneath the
wave, I floated above my whole Past. The fields of my childhood flitted by; the
halls of my youthful labours; the streets of great cities where I had dwelt;
and the assemblies of men and women wherein I had wearied myself seeking for
rest. But so indistinct were the visions, that sometimes I thought I was
sailing on a shallow sea, and that strange rocks and forests of sea-plants
beguiled my eye, sufficiently to be transformed, by the magic of the phantasy,
into well-known objects and regions. Yet, at times, a beloved form seemed to
lie close beneath me in sleep; and the eyelids would tremble as if about to
forsake the conscious eye; and the arms would heave upwards, as if in dreams
they sought for a satisfying presence. But these motions might come only from
the heaving of the waters between those forms and me. Soon I fell asleep,
overcome with fatigue and delight. In dreams of unspeakable joy—of
restored friendships; of revived embraces; of love which said it had never
died; of faces that had vanished long ago, yet said with smiling lips that they
knew nothing of the grave; of pardons implored, and granted with such bursting
floods of love, that I was almost glad I had sinned—thus I passed through
this wondrous twilight. I awoke with the feeling that I had been kissed and
loved to my heart’s content; and found that my boat was floating
motionless by the grassy shore of a little island.</p>
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