Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

I sank far into the waters, and sought not to return. I felt as

if once more the great arms of the beech-tree were around me, soothing

me after the miseries I had passed through, and telling me, like a

little sick child, that I should be better to-morrow. The waters of

themselves lifted me, as with loving arms, to the surface. I breathed

again, but did not unclose my eyes. I would not look on the wintry sea,

and the pitiless gray sky. Thus I floated, till something gently touched

me. It was a little boat floating beside me. How it came there I could

not tell; but it rose and sank on the waters, and kept touching me in

its fall, as if with a human will to let me know that help was by me. It

was a little gay-coloured boat, seemingly covered with glistering scales

like those of a fish, all of brilliant rainbow hues. I scrambled into

it, and lay down in the bottom, with a sense of exquisite repose.

Then I drew over me a rich, heavy, purple cloth that was beside me; and,

lying still, knew, by the sound of the waters, that my little bark was

fleeting rapidly onwards. Finding, however, none of that stormy motion

which the sea had manifested when I beheld it from the shore, I opened

my eyes; and, looking first up, saw above me the deep violet sky of a

warm southern night; and then, lifting my head, saw that I was sailing

fast upon a summer sea, in the last border of a southern twilight. The

aureole of the sun yet shot the extreme faint tips of its longest rays

above the horizon-waves, and withdrew them not. It was a perpetual

twilight. The stars, great and earnest, like children's eyes, bent down

lovingly towards the waters; and the reflected stars within seemed to

float up, as if longing to meet their embraces. But when I looked down,

a new wonder met my view. For, vaguely revealed beneath the wave, I

floated above my whole Past. The fields of my childhood flitted by; the

halls of my youthful labours; the streets of great cities where I had

dwelt; and the assemblies of men and women wherein I had wearied myself

seeking for rest.

But so indistinct were the visions, that sometimes

I thought I was sailing on a shallow sea, and that strange rocks and

forests of sea-plants beguiled my eye, sufficiently to be transformed,

by the magic of the phantasy, into well-known objects and regions. Yet,

at times, a beloved form seemed to lie close beneath me in sleep; and

the eyelids would tremble as if about to forsake the conscious eye;

and the arms would heave upwards, as if in dreams they sought for a

satisfying presence. But these motions might come only from the heaving

of the waters between those forms and me. Soon I fell asleep, overcome

with fatigue and delight. In dreams of unspeakable joy--of restored

friendships; of revived embraces; of love which said it had never died;

of faces that had vanished long ago, yet said with smiling lips that

they knew nothing of the grave; of pardons implored, and granted with

such bursting floods of love, that I was almost glad I had sinned--thus

I passed through this wondrous twilight. I awoke with the feeling that I

had been kissed and loved to my heart's content; and found that my boat

was floating motionless by the grassy shore of a little island.