Page:Hyperion, a romance.djvu/14

10 before him. Sorrow unspeakable was upon his spirit in that lonely hour; and, hiding his face in his hands, he exclaimed aloud:—

“Spirit of the past! look not so mournfully at me with thy great tearful eyes! Touch me not with thy cold hand! Breathe not upon me with the icy breath of the grave! Chant no more that dirge of sorrow, through the long and silent watches of the night!”

Mournful voices from afar seemed to answer, “Treuenfels!” and he remembered how others had suffered, and his heart grew still.

Slowly the landscape brightened. Down the rushing, stream came a boat, with its white wings spread, and darted like a swallow through the narrow pass of God’s-Help. The boatmen were singing,—but not the song of Roland the Brave, which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund, as she sat within the walls of that cloister which now looked forth in the pale morning from amid the leafless linden-trees. The dim traditions of those gray old times rose in the traveller’s memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth, as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the faithful paladin to stone and he were