Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

"From Eden's bowers the full-fed rivers flow,

To guide the outcasts to the land of woe:

Our Earth one little toiling streamlet yields.

To guide the wanderers to the happy fields."

After leaving this village, where I had rested for nearly a

week, I travelled through a desert region of dry sand and glittering

rocks, peopled principally by goblin-fairies. When I first entered their

domains, and, indeed, whenever I fell in with another tribe of them,

they began mocking me with offered handfuls of gold and jewels, making

hideous grimaces at me, and performing the most antic homage, as if they

thought I expected reverence, and meant to humour me like a maniac. But

ever, as soon as one cast his eyes on the shadow behind me, he made a

wry face, partly of pity, partly of contempt, and looked ashamed, as

if he had been caught doing something inhuman; then, throwing down his

handful of gold, and ceasing all his grimaces, he stood aside to let me

pass in peace, and made signs to his companions to do the like. I had no

inclination to observe them much, for the shadow was in my heart as well

as at my heels.

I walked listlessly and almost hopelessly along, till I

arrived one day at a small spring; which, bursting cool from the heart

of a sun-heated rock, flowed somewhat southwards from the direction I

had been taking. I drank of this spring, and found myself wonderfully

refreshed. A kind of love to the cheerful little stream arose in my

heart.

It was born in a desert; but it seemed to say to itself, "I will

flow, and sing, and lave my banks, till I make my desert a paradise."

I thought I could not do better than follow it, and see what it made

of it. So down with the stream I went, over rocky lands, burning with

sunbeams. But the rivulet flowed not far, before a few blades of

grass appeared on its banks, and then, here and there, a stunted bush.

Sometimes it disappeared altogether under ground; and after I had

wandered some distance, as near as I could guess, in the direction it

seemed to take, I would suddenly hear it again, singing, sometimes far

away to my right or left, amongst new rocks, over which it made new

cataracts of watery melodies. The verdure on its banks increased as it

flowed; other streams joined it; and at last, after many days' travel,

I found myself, one gorgeous summer evening, resting by the side of a

broad river, with a glorious horse-chestnut tree towering above me, and

dropping its blossoms, milk-white and rosy-red, all about me. As I sat,

a gush of joy sprang forth in my heart, and over flowed at my eyes.