Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

My mind soon grew calm; and I began the duties of my new position,

somewhat instructed, I hoped, by the adventures that had befallen me in

Fairy Land. Could I translate the experience of my travels there, into

common life? This was the question. Or must I live it all over again,

and learn it all over again, in the other forms that belong to the world

of men, whose experience yet runs parallel to that of Fairy Land? These

questions I cannot answer yet. But I fear.

Even yet, I find myself looking round sometimes with anxiety, to see

whether my shadow falls right away from the sun or no. I have never yet

discovered any inclination to either side. And if I am not unfrequently

sad, I yet cast no more of a shade on the earth, than most men who have

lived in it as long as I. I have a strange feeling sometimes, that I am

a ghost, sent into the world to minister to my fellow men, or, rather,

to repair the wrongs I have already done.

May the world be brighter for me, at least in those portions of it,

where my darkness falls not.

Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had

lost my Shadow.

When the thought of the blessedness I experienced, after my death in

Fairy Land, is too high for me to lay hold upon it and hope in it,

I often think of the wise woman in the cottage, and of her solemn

assurance that she knew something too good to be told. When I am

oppressed by any sorrow or real perplexity, I often feel as if I had

only left her cottage for a time, and would soon return out of the

vision, into it again. Sometimes, on such occasions, I find myself,

unconsciously almost, looking about for the mystic mark of red, with

the vague hope of entering her door, and being comforted by her wise

tenderness. I then console myself by saying: "I have come through the

door of Dismay; and the way back from the world into which that has led

me, is through my tomb. Upon that the red sign lies, and I shall find it

one day, and be glad."

I will end my story with the relation of an incident which befell me a

few days ago. I had been with my reapers, and, when they ceased their

work at noon, I had lain down under the shadow of a great, ancient

beech-tree, that stood on the edge of the field. As I lay, with my eyes

closed, I began to listen to the sound of the leaves overhead. At first,

they made sweet inarticulate music alone; but, by-and-by, the sound

seemed to begin to take shape, and to be gradually moulding itself into

words; till, at last, I seemed able to distinguish these, half-dissolved

in a little ocean of circumfluent tones: "A great good is coming--is

coming--is coming to thee, Anodos;" and so over and over again. I

fancied that the sound reminded me of the voice of the ancient woman, in

the cottage that was four-square.