Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/205

 He walked with his bride into the Castle-garden; she hastened quickly through the castle, and past its servants'hall, where the fair flowers of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, under a long, dreary pressure; paid her soul expanded, and breathed in the free open garden, on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds of the blossoms which to-day were gladdening her existence. Still Eden! Green flower-checkered chiaroscuro!—The moon is sleeping under ground like a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman of the sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, and, modest as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.

The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut; now standing locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a fragment of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees were folding, with clammy, half-formed leaves, over the thick, intertwisted tangles of the bushes.—The Spring was standing, like a conqueror, with Winter at his feet.—In the blue pond, now bloodless, a dusky evening-sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters were moistening the flower-beds.—The silver sparks of stars were rising on the altar of the East, and falling down extinguished in the red sea of the West.

The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees; and gave tones to the acacia-grove, and the tones called to the pair who had first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think of what is past, and of my withering and your own; and be holy as Eternity, and weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also!"—And the wet-eyed bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride