Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

Now I was indeed in pitiful plight. There was literally nothing in the

tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to the roof; in

which, as I had seen from without, there was one little square opening.

This I now knew to be the only window the tower possessed. I sat down on

the floor, in listless wretchedness. I think I must have fallen asleep,

and have slept for hours; for I suddenly became aware of existence, in

observing that the moon was shining through the hole in the roof. As she

rose higher and higher, her light crept down the wall over me, till at

last it shone right upon my head. Instantaneously the walls of the tower

seemed to vanish away like a mist. I sat beneath a beech, on the edge

of a forest, and the open country lay, in the moonlight, for miles and

miles around me, spotted with glimmering houses and spires and towers.

I thought with myself, "Oh, joy! it was only a dream; the horrible narrow

waste is gone, and I wake beneath a beech-tree, perhaps one that loves

me, and I can go where I will." I rose, as I thought, and walked about,

and did what I would, but ever kept near the tree; for always, and, of

course, since my meeting with the woman of the beech-tree far more than

ever, I loved that tree. So the night wore on. I waited for the sun to

rise, before I could venture to renew my journey. But as soon as the

first faint light of the dawn appeared, instead of shining upon me

from the eye of the morning, it stole like a fainting ghost through the

little square hole above my head; and the walls came out as the light

grew, and the glorious night was swallowed up of the hateful day. The

long dreary day passed. My shadow lay black on the floor. I felt no

hunger, no need of food. The night came. The moon shone. I watched her

light slowly descending the wall, as I might have watched, adown the

sky, the long, swift approach of a helping angel. Her rays touched me,

and I was free. Thus night after night passed away. I should have died

but for this. Every night the conviction returned, that I was free.

Every morning I sat wretchedly disconsolate. At length, when the course

of the moon no longer permitted her beams to touch me, the night was

dreary as the day.

When I slept, I was somewhat consoled by my dreams; but all the time I

dreamed, I knew that I was only dreaming. But one night, at length, the

moon, a mere shred of pallor, scattered a few thin ghostly rays upon me;

and I think I fell asleep and dreamed. I sat in an autumn night before

the vintage, on a hill overlooking my own castle. My heart sprang with

joy. Oh, to be a child again, innocent, fearless, without shame or

desire! I walked down to the castle. All were in consternation at my

absence. My sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and clung

to me, with incoherent cries, as I entered. My old friends came flocking

round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall. It was the

light of the dawn shining through the square window of my tower.

More earnestly than ever, I longed for freedom after this dream; more

drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched day. I measured by the

sunbeams, caught through the little window in the trap of my tower, how

it went by, waiting only for the dreams of the night.