Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

"We are ne'er like angels till our passions die."

DEKKER.

"This wretched INN, where we scarce stay to bait,

We call our DWELLING-PLACE:

We call one STEP A RACE:

But angels in their full enlightened state,

Angels, who LIVE, and know what 'tis to BE,

Who all the nonsense of our language see,

Who speak THINGS, and our WORDS,their ill-drawn

PICTURES, scorn,

When we, by a foolish figure, say,

BEHOLD AN OLD MAN DEAD! then they

Speak properly, and cry, BEHOLD A MAN-CHILD BORN!"

COWLEY.

I was dead, and right content. I lay in my coffin, with my hands folded

in peace. The knight, and the lady I loved, wept over me.

Her tears fell on my face.

"Ah!" said the knight, "I rushed amongst them like a madman. I hewed

them down like brushwood. Their swords battered on me like hail, but

hurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He was dead. But he had

throttled the monster, and I had to cut the handful out of its throat,

before I could disengage and carry off his body. They dared not molest

me as I brought him back."

"He has died well," said the lady.

My spirit rejoiced. They left me to my repose. I felt as if a cool hand

had been laid upon my heart, and had stilled it. My soul was like a

summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet

glistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and the

wind of the twilight has begun to blow. The hot fever of life had gone

by, and I breathed the clear mountain-air of the land of Death. I had

never dreamed of such blessedness. It was not that I had in any way

ceased to be what I had been. The very fact that anything can die,

implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must either

take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and

arises again; or, in conscious existence, may, perhaps, continue to

lead a purely spiritual life.

If my passions were dead, the souls of

the passions, those essential mysteries of the spirit which had imbodied

themselves in the passions, and had given to them all their glory and

wonderment, yet lived, yet glowed, with a pure, undying fire. They rose

above their vanishing earthly garments, and disclosed themselves angels

of light. But oh, how beautiful beyond the old form! I lay thus for

a time, and lived as it were an unradiating existence; my soul a

motionless lake, that received all things and gave nothing back;

satisfied in still contemplation, and spiritual consciousness.