Phantastes, A Faerie Romance

"Your gallery

Ha we pass'd through, not without much content

In many singularities; but we saw not

That which my daughter came to look upon,

The state of her mother."

Winter's Tale.

It seemed to me strange, that all this time I had heard no music in the

fairy palace. I was convinced there must be music in it, but that my

sense was as yet too gross to receive the influence of those mysterious

motions that beget sound. Sometimes I felt sure, from the way the few

figures of which I got such transitory glimpses passed me, or glided

into vacancy before me, that they were moving to the law of music;

and, in fact, several times I fancied for a moment that I heard a few

wondrous tones coming I knew not whence. But they did not last long

enough to convince me that I had heard them with the bodily sense. Such

as they were, however, they took strange liberties with me, causing me

to burst suddenly into tears, of which there was no presence to make

me ashamed, or casting me into a kind of trance of speechless delight,

which, passing as suddenly, left me faint and longing for more.

Now, on an evening, before I had been a week in the palace, I was

wandering through one lighted arcade and corridor after another. At

length I arrived, through a door that closed behind me, in another vast

hall of the palace. It was filled with a subdued crimson light; by

which I saw that slender pillars of black, built close to walls of white

marble, rose to a great height, and then, dividing into innumerable

divergent arches, supported a roof, like the walls, of white marble,

upon which the arches intersected intricately, forming a fretting of

black upon the white, like the network of a skeleton-leaf. The floor was

black.

Between several pairs of the pillars upon every side, the place of the

wall behind was occupied by a crimson curtain of thick silk, hanging in

heavy and rich folds. Behind each of these curtains burned a powerful

light, and these were the sources of the glow that filled the hall. A

peculiar delicious odour pervaded the place. As soon as I entered, the

old inspiration seemed to return to me, for I felt a strong impulse to

sing; or rather, it seemed as if some one else was singing a song in my

soul, which wanted to come forth at my lips, imbodied in my breath. But

I kept silence; and feeling somewhat overcome by the red light and the

perfume, as well as by the emotion within me, and seeing at one end of

the hall a great crimson chair, more like a throne than a chair, beside

a table of white marble, I went to it, and, throwing myself in it, gave

myself up to a succession of images of bewildering beauty, which passed

before my inward eye, in a long and occasionally crowded train. Here I

sat for hours, I suppose; till, returning somewhat to myself, I saw that

the red light had paled away, and felt a cool gentle breath gliding over

my forehead. I rose and left the hall with unsteady steps, finding my

way with some difficulty to my own chamber, and faintly remembering,

as I went, that only in the marble cave, before I found the sleeping

statue, had I ever had a similar experience.