Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

Now I could weep. When she saw me weeping, she sang: Better to sit at the waters' birth,

Than a sea of waves to win;

To live in the love that floweth forth,

Than the love that cometh in.

Be thy heart a well of love, my child,

Flowing, and free, and sure;

For a cistern of love, though undefiled,

Keeps not the spirit pure.

I rose from the earth, loving the white lady as I had never loved her

before.

Then I walked up to the door of Dismay, and opened it, and went out. And

lo! I came forth upon a crowded street, where men and women went to

and fro in multitudes. I knew it well; and, turning to one hand, walked

sadly along the pavement. Suddenly I saw approaching me, a little way

off, a form well known to me (WELL-KNOWN!--alas, how weak the word!) in

the years when I thought my boyhood was left behind, and shortly before

I entered the realm of Fairy Land. Wrong and Sorrow had gone together,

hand-in-hand as it is well they do.

Unchangeably dear was that face. It lay in my heart as a child lies in

its own white bed; but I could not meet her.

"Anything but that," I said, and, turning aside, sprang up the steps

to a door, on which I fancied I saw the mystic sign. I entered--not the

mysterious cottage, but her home. I rushed wildly on, and stood by the

door of her room.

"She is out," I said, "I will see the old room once more."

I opened the door gently, and stood in a great solemn church. A

deep-toned bell, whose sounds throbbed and echoed and swam through the

empty building, struck the hour of midnight. The moon shone through

the windows of the clerestory, and enough of the ghostly radiance was

diffused through the church to let me see, walking with a stately, yet

somewhat trailing and stumbling step, down the opposite aisle, for I

stood in one of the transepts, a figure dressed in a white robe, whether

for the night, or for that longer night which lies too deep for the day,

I could not tell. Was it she? and was this her chamber? I crossed the

church, and followed. The figure stopped, seemed to ascend as it were

a high bed, and lay down. I reached the place where it lay, glimmering

white. The bed was a tomb. The light was too ghostly to see clearly, but

I passed my hand over the face and the hands and the feet, which were

all bare. They were cold--they were marble, but I knew them. It grew

dark. I turned to retrace my steps, but found, ere long, that I had

wandered into what seemed a little chapel. I groped about, seeking the

door. Everything I touched belonged to the dead. My hands fell on the

cold effigy of a knight who lay with his legs crossed and his sword

broken beside him. He lay in his noble rest, and I lived on in ignoble

strife. I felt for the left hand and a certain finger; I found there the

ring I knew: he was one of my own ancestors. I was in the chapel over

the burial-vault of my race. I called aloud: "If any of the dead are

moving here, let them take pity upon me, for I, alas! am still alive;

and let some dead woman comfort me, for I am a stranger in the land of

the dead, and see no light." A warm kiss alighted on my lips through

the dark. And I said, "The dead kiss well; I will not be afraid." And a

great hand was reached out of the dark, and grasped mine for a moment,

mightily and tenderly. I said to myself: "The veil between, though very

dark, is very thin."