Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/386

 like the sun, who before all-beholding Nature casts himself so gorgeous into the sea that its red waves strike the very heaven, but like the tranquil moon, who, in the midnight, silvers the vaporous air, and sinks down unseen behind its dim veil. Death sent his gentler sister Unconsciousness before; she touched the heart of the Betrothed, and chilled the warm countenance; the flowers of her cheek withered; the pale snow of winter, under which the spring of eternity grows green, clothed her forehead and her hands. Then a burning tear broke from the swelling eye of the Angel, and, while he thought his heart loosed itself in the form of a tear as a pearl from the brittle shell, his Betrothed, awaked to the last delirium, moved her eyes once again, drew him close to her heart, and died as she kissed him, and said, "Now I am with thee, my brother!" Then the Angel believed his heavenly brother had given him the sign of the kiss and death. Yet no radiant heaven surrounded him, nor aught but funereal darkness, and he sighed because this was not his death, only the anguish of man over the death of another.

"O ye afflicted mortals!" he cried, "how can ye weary ones survive this! How can ye become old when the circle of youthful forms breaks and lies at length altogether scattered around,—when the graves of your friends lead down like steps to your own,—and when age becomes like the silent, blank evening hour of a cold battle-field! ye poor mortals! how can your hearts endure it?"

The body of the translated hero-soul placed the gentle Angel among hard men, their injustice, and the distortions of Vice and of Passion; about his figure, also, was laid the thorny girdle of sceptres bound together, which