Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

The subjects were not very interesting, except as associated with the

individual life and necessities of the little creatures: where the best

nuts were to be found in the neighbourhood, and who could crack them

best, or who had most laid up for the winter, and such like; only they

never said where the store was. There was no great difference in kind

between their talk and our ordinary human conversation. Some of the

creatures I never heard speak at all, and believe they never do so,

except under the impulse of some great excitement. The mice talked; but

the hedgehogs seemed very phlegmatic; and though I met a couple of moles

above ground several times, they never said a word to each other in my

hearing. There were no wild beasts in the forest; at least, I did not

see one larger than a wild cat. There were plenty of snakes, however,

and I do not think they were all harmless; but none ever bit me.

Soon after mid-day I arrived at a bare rocky hill, of no great size, but

very steep; and having no trees--scarcely even a bush--upon it, entirely

exposed to the heat of the sun. Over this my way seemed to lie, and

I immediately began the ascent. On reaching the top, hot and weary, I

looked around me, and saw that the forest still stretched as far as the

sight could reach on every side of me. I observed that the trees, in the

direction in which I was about to descend, did not come so near the

foot of the hill as on the other side, and was especially regretting the

unexpected postponement of shelter, because this side of the hill seemed

more difficult to descend than the other had been to climb, when my eye

caught the appearance of a natural path, winding down through broken

rocks and along the course of a tiny stream, which I hoped would lead

me more easily to the foot. I tried it, and found the descent not at all

laborious; nevertheless, when I reached the bottom, I was very tired and

exhausted with the heat. But just where the path seemed to end, rose

a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs and creeping plants, some of

them in full and splendid blossom: these almost concealed an opening in

the rock, into which the path appeared to lead. I entered, thirsting for

the shade which it promised.

What was my delight to find a rocky

cell, all the angles rounded away with rich moss, and every ledge and

projection crowded with lovely ferns, the variety of whose forms, and

groupings, and shades wrought in me like a poem; for such a harmony

could not exist, except they all consented to some one end! A little

well of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow in one corner. I drank,

and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life must be; then threw myself

on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along the inner end. Here I lay

in a delicious reverie for some time; during which all lovely forms, and

colours, and sounds seemed to use my brain as a common hall, where they

could come and go, unbidden and unexcused. I had never imagined that

such capacity for simple happiness lay in me, as was now awakened by

this assembly of forms and spiritual sensations, which yet were far too

vague to admit of being translated into any shape common to my own and

another mind. I had lain for an hour, I should suppose, though it may

have been far longer, when, the harmonious tumult in my mind having

somewhat relaxed, I became aware that my eyes were fixed on a strange,

time-worn bas-relief on the rock opposite to me. This, after some

pondering, I concluded to represent Pygmalion, as he awaited the

quickening of his statue. The sculptor sat more rigid than the figure to

which his eyes were turned. That seemed about to step from its pedestal

and embrace the man, who waited rather than expected.