Page:Tales from the German - Oxenford.djvu/287

 face. Beneath this face, as it approached her, a heart at last formed itself. It was Eugenius, and his beloved arose to meet him. But as she exclaimed, with transport, "Now I am dead!"—the two dreams, both hers and his, vanished, and the two were again severed.

Eugenius waked above, the glimmering earth still stood in the sky, his heart was oppressed, and his eye beamed with a tear which had not fallen on the moon. Rosamond waked below, and a large warm dew-drop hung in one of the flowers of her bosom. Then did the last mist of her soul shower down in a light rain of tears, her soul became light and sun-clear, and her eye hung gently on the dawning sky; the earth was indeed strange to her, but no longer hateful; and her hands moved as though they were leading those who had died.

The angel of rest looked upon the moon, and looked upon the earth, and he was softened by the sighs from both. On the morning-earth he perceived an eclipse of the sun, and a bereft one; he saw Rosamond during this transient night sink upon the flowers that slept in the darkness, and into the cold evening-dew which fell upon the morning-dew, and stretching forth her hands towards the shaded heaven, which was full of night-birds, look up towards the moon with inexpressible longing, as it floated trembling in the sun. The angel looked upon the moon, and near him wept the departed one, who saw the earth swimming deep below,—a flood of shade, fitted into a ring of fire, and from whom the mourning form that dwelt upon it, took all the happiness of heaven. Then was the heavenly heart of the angel of peace broken—he seized the hand of Eugenius and that of his child—drew both through the second world, and bore them down to the dark earth. Rosamond saw three forms wandering through the obscurity, the gleam from whom reached the starry heaven, and went along hovering over them. Her beloved and her child flew like spring-days to her heart, and said, "Oh, thou dear one, come with us!" Her maternal heart broke with maternal love, the circulation of earth-blood was stopped, her life was ended; and happily, happily, did she stammer forth to the two beloved hearts, "Can I not then die?" "Thou hast died already," said the angel of the three fond ones, weeping with joy, "Yonder thou seest the sphere of earth, whence thou comest, still in shade." And the waves of joy closed on high over the blessed world, and all the happy and all children looked upon our sphere which still trembled in the shade.

Yea, indeed, is it in shade! But man is higher than his place. He looks up and spreads the wings of his soul, and when the sixty minutes, which we call sixty years, have finished striking, he then, lifts himself up, and kindles himself as he rises, and the ashes of his plumage fall back, and the unveiled soul rises alone, free from earth, and pure as a musical tone. But here, in the midst of dark life, he