Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

"I saw a ship sailing upon the sea

Deeply laden as ship could be;

But not so deep as in love I am

For I care not whether I sink or swim."

Old Ballad.

"But Love is such a Mystery

I cannot find it out:

For when I think I'm best resols'd,

I then am in most doubt."

SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

One story I will try to reproduce. But, alas! it is like trying to

reconstruct a forest out of broken branches and withered leaves. In the

fairy book, everything was just as it should be, though whether in words

or something else, I cannot tell. It glowed and flashed the thoughts

upon the soul, with such a power that the medium disappeared from the

consciousness, and it was occupied only with the things themselves.

My representation of it must resemble a translation from a rich and

powerful language, capable of embodying the thoughts of a splendidly

developed people, into the meagre and half-articulate speech of a savage

tribe. Of course, while I read it, I was Cosmo, and his history

was mine. Yet, all the time, I seemed to have a kind of double

consciousness, and the story a double meaning. Sometimes it seemed

only to represent a simple story of ordinary life, perhaps almost of

universal life; wherein two souls, loving each other and longing to come

nearer, do, after all, but behold each other as in a glass darkly.

As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the

solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the

lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through

the earth's atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men, and

sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and

effect, when between the two no connecting links can be traced.

Cosmo von Wehrstahl was a student at the University of Prague. Though

of a noble family, he was poor, and prided himself upon the independence

that poverty gives; for what will not a man pride himself upon, when he

cannot get rid of it? A favourite with his fellow students, he yet had

no companions; and none of them had ever crossed the threshold of his

lodging in the top of one of the highest houses in the old town. Indeed,

the secret of much of that complaisance which recommended him to his

fellows, was the thought of his unknown retreat, whither in the evening

he could betake himself and indulge undisturbed in his own studies and

reveries. These studies, besides those subjects necessary to his course

at the University, embraced some less commonly known and approved;

for in a secret drawer lay the works of Albertus Magnus and Cornelius

Agrippa, along with others less read and more abstruse. As yet, however,

he had followed these researches only from curiosity, and had turned

them to no practical purpose.