Page:Tales from the German - Oxenford.djvu/286

 have sucked out of all thy wounds the last venom with which the human heart is laid beneath its surface, just as the hand when buried in earth recovers from the sting of a bee. But I turn mine eye away from thy pain, and look up at the glimmering moon, where Eugenius opens his eyes among smiling children, and his own child, now with wings, falls upon his heart. How quiet is every thing in the dimly lit portico of the second world, a misty rain of light silvers o'er the bright fields of the first heaven, and beads of light instead of sparkling dew hang upon flowers and summits, the blue of heaven is darker over the lily plains, all the melodies in the thinner air are but a dispersed echo,—only night-flowers exhale their scents, and dazzle waving around calmer glances—here the waving plains rock as in a cradle the crushed souls, and the lofty billows of life fall gliding apart—then the heart sleeps, the eye becomes dry, the wish becomes silent. Children flutter like the hum of bees around the heart which is sunk in earth, and is still palpitating, and the dream after death represents the earthly life, as a dream here represents childhood here, magically, soothingly, softly, and free from care.

Eugenius looked from the moon towards the earth, which for a long moon-day—equal to two earth-weeks—floated like a thin white cloud across the blue sky; but he did not recognise his old motherland. At last the sun set to the moon, and our earth rested, large, glimmering, and immoveable, on the pure horizon of Elysium, scattering, like a water-wheel upon a meadow, the flowing beams upon the waving Elysian garden. He then recognised the earth, upon which he had left a heart so troubled, in a breast so beloved; and his soul, which reposed in pleasure, became full of melancholy, and of an infinite longing after the beloved of his former life, who was suffering below. "Oh, my Rosamond! why dost thou not leave a sphere, where nothing more loves thee?" And he cast a supplicating look at the angel of rest, and said: "Beloved one, take me down from the land of quiet, and lead me to the faithful soul, that I may see her, and again feel pain, so that she may not pine alone."

Then his heart began suddenly, as it were, to float without any bounds; breezes fluttered around him, as though they raised him flying, wafted him away as they swelled, and veiled him in floods; he sank through the red evening twilights as through roses, and through the night as through bowers, and through a damp atmosphere which filled his eye with drops. Then it seemed as though old dreams of childhood had returned—then there arose a complaint from the distance, which re-opened all his closed wounds; the complaint, as it drew nearer, became Rosamond's voice at last she herself was before him, unrecognisable, alone, without solace, without a tear, without colour.

And Rosamond dreamed upon the earth, and it was to her as though the sun took wings, and became an angel. This angel, she dreamed, drew down towards her the moon, which became a gentle