Produced by David Widger and Dagny THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE TO WHICH IS PREFIXED THE IDEAL WORLD By Edward Bulwer Lytton (Lord Lytton) THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE TO HENRY LYTTON BULWER. ALLOW me, my dear Brother, to dedicate this Work to you. The greater part of it (namely, the tales which vary and relieve the voyages of Gertrude and Trevylyan) was written in the pleasant excursion we made together some years ago. Among the associations--some sad and some pleasing--connected with the general design, none are so agreeable to me as those that remind me of the friendship subsisting between us, and which, unlike that of near relations in general, has grown stronger and more intimate as our footsteps have receded farther from the fields where we played together in our childhood. I dedicate this Work to you with the more pleasure, not only when I remember that it has always been a favourite with yourself, but when I think that it is one of my writings most liked in foreign countries; and I may possibly, therefore, have found a record destined to endure the affectionate esteem which this Dedication is intended to convey. Yours, etc. E. L. B. LONDON, April 23, 1840. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION. COULD I prescribe to the critic and to the public, I would wish that this work might be tried by the rules rather of poetry than prose, for according to those rules have been both its conception and its execution; and I feel that something of sympathy with the authorâs design is requisite to win indulgence for the superstitions he has incorporated with his tale, for the floridity of his style, and the redundance of his descriptions. Perhaps, indeed, it would be impossible, in attempting to paint the scenery and embody some of the Legends of the Rhine, not to give (it may be, too loosely) the reins to the imagination, or to escape the influence of that wild German spirit which I have sought to transfer to a colder tongue. I have made the experiment of selecting for the main interest of my work the simplest materials, and weaving upon them the ornaments given chiefly to subjects of a more fanciful nature. I know not how far I have succeeded, but various reasons have conspired to make this the work, above all others that I have written, which has given me the most delight (though not unmixed with melancholy) in producing, and in which my mind for the time has been the most completely absorbed. But the ardour of composition is often disproportioned to the merit of the work; and the public sometimes, nor unjustly, avenges itself for that forgetfulness of its existence which makes the chief charm of an authorâs solitude,--and the happiest, if not the wisest, inspiration of his dreams. PREFACE. WITH the younger class of my readers this work has had the good fortune to find especial favour; perhaps because it is in itself a collection of the thoughts and sentiments that constitute the Romance of youth. It has little to do with the positive truths of our actual life, and does not pretend to deal with the larger passions and more stirring interests of our kind. It is but an episode out of the graver epic of human destinies. It requires no explanation of its purpose, and no analysis of its story; the one is evident, the other simple,--the first seeks but to illustrate visible nature through the poetry of the affections; the other is but the narrative of the most real of mortal sorrows, which the Author attempts to take out of the region of pain by various accessories from the Ideal. The connecting tale itself is but the string that binds into a garland the wild-flowers cast upon a grave. The descriptions of the Rhine have been considered by Germans sufficiently faithful to render this tribute to their land and their legends one of the popular guide-books along the course it illustrates,--especially to such tourists as wish not only to take in with the eye the inventory of the river, but to seize the peculiar spirit which invests the wave and the bank with a beauty that can only be made visible by reflection. He little comprehends the true charm of the Rhine who gazes on the vines on the hill-tops without a thought of the imaginary world with which their recesses have been peopled by the graceful credulity of old; who surveys the steep ruins that overshadow the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time. Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through the infinite cycles of decay. He who would judge adequately of a landscape must regard it not only with the painterâs eye, but with the poetâs. The feelings which the sight of any scene in Nature conveys to the mind--more especially of any scene on which history or fiction has left its trace--must depend upon our sympathy with those associations which make up what may be called the spiritual character of the spot. If indifferent to those associations, we should see only hedgerows and ploughed land in the battle-field of Bannockburn; and the traveller would but look on a dreary waste, whether he stood amidst the piles of the Druid on Salisbury plain, or trod his bewildered way over the broad expanse on which the Chaldaean first learned to number the stars. To the former editions of this tale was prefixed a poem on âThe Ideal,â which had all the worst faults of the authorâs earliest compositions in verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than that which it replaces. CONTENTS. THE IDEAL WORLD THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE CHAPTER I. In which the Reader is Introduced to Queen Nymphalin CHAPTER II. The Lovers CHAPTER III. Feelings CHAPTER IV. The Maid of Malines CHAPTER V. Rotterdam.--The Character of the Dutch.--Their Resemblance to the Germans.--A Dispute between Vane and Trevylyan, after the manner of the ancient Novelists, as to which is preferable, the Life of Action, or the Life of Repose.--Trevylyanâs Contrast between Literary Ambition and the Ambition of Public Life CHAPTER VI. Gorcum.--The Tour of the Virtues: a Philosopherâs Tale CHAPTER VII. Cologne.--The Traces of the Roman Yoke.--The Church of St. Maria.--Trevylyanâs Reflections on the Monastic Life.--The Tomb of the Three Kings.--An Evening Excursion on the Rhine CHAPTER VIII. The Soul in Purgatory; or, Love Stronger than Death CHAPTER IX. The Scenery of the Rhine analogous to the German Literary Genius.--The Drachenfels CHAPTER X. The Legend of Roland.--The Adventures of Nymphalin on the Island of Nonnewerth.--Her Song.--The Decay of the Fairy-Faith in England CHAPTER XI. Wherein the Reader is made Spectator with the English Fairies of the Scenes and Beings that are beneath the Earth CHAPTER XII. The Wooing of Master Fox CHAPTER XIII. The Tomb of a Father of Many Children CHAPTER XIV. The Fairyâs Cave, and the Fairyâs Wish CHAPTER XV. The Banks of the Rhine.--From the Drachenfels to Brohl.--An Incident that suffices in this Tale for an Epoch CHAPTER XVI. Gertrude.--The Excursion to Hammerstein.--Thoughts CHAPTER XVII. Letter from Trevylyan to ----- CHAPTER XVIII. Coblentz.--Excursion to the Mountains of Taunus; Roman Tower in the Valley of Ehrenbreitstein.--Travel, its Pleasures estimated differently by the Young and the Old.--The Student of Heidelberg: his Criticisms on German Literature CHAPTER XIX. The Fallen Star; or, the History of a False Religion CHAPTER XX. Glenhausen.--The Power of Love in Sanctified Places.--A Portrait of Frederick Barbarossa.--The Ambition of Men finds no adequate Sympathy in Women CHAPTER XXI. View of Ehrenbreitstein.--A New Alarm in Gertrudeâs Health.--Trarbach CHAPTER XXII. The Double Life.--Trevylyanâs Fate.--Sorrow the Parent of Fame.--Niederlahnstein.--Dreams CHAPTER XXIII. The Life of Dreams CHAPTER XXIV. The Brothers CHAPTER XXV. The Immortality of the Soul.--A Common Incident not before Described. --Trevylyan and Gertrude CHAPTER XXVI. In which the Reader will learn how the Fairies were received by the Sovereigns of the Mines.--The Complaint of the Last of the Fauns.--The Red Huntsman.--The Storm.--Death CHAPTER XXVII. Thurmberg.--A Storm upon the Rhine.--The Ruins of Rheinfels.--Peril Unfelt by Love.--The Echo of the Lurlei-berg.--St. Goar.--Kaub, Gutenfels, and Pfalzgrafenstein.--A certain Vastness of Mind in the First Hermits.--The Scenery of the Rhine to Bacharach CHAPTER XXVIII. The Voyage to Bingen.--The Simple Incidents in this Tale Excused.--The Situation and Character of Gertrude.--The Conversation of the Lovers in the Tempest.--A Fact Contradicted.--Thoughts occasioned by a Madhouse amongst the most Beautiful Landscapes of the Rhine CHAPTER XXIX. Ellfeld.--Mayence.--Heidelberg.--A Conversation between Vane and the German Student.--The Ruins of the Castle of Heidelberg and its Solitary Habitant CHAPTER XXX. No Part of the Earth really Solitary.--The Song of the Fairies.--The Sacred Spot.--The Witch of the Evil Winds.--The Spell and the Duty of the Fairies CHAPTER XXXI. Gertrude and Trevylyan, when the former is awakened to the Approach of Death CHAPTER XXXII. A Spot to be Buried in CHAPTER THE LAST The Conclusion of this Tale THE IDEAL WORLD I. THE IDEAL WORLD,--ITS REALM IS EVERYWHERE AROUND US; ITS INHABITANTS ARE THE IMMORTAL PERSONIFICATIONS OF ALL BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS; TO THAT WORLD WE ATTAIN BY THE REPOSE OF THE SENSES. AROUND âthis visible diurnal sphereâ There floats a World that girds us like the space; On wandering clouds and gliding beams career Its ever-moving murmurous Populace. There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below Ascending live, and in celestial shapes. To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go? Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes: To care, to sin, to passion close thine eyes; Sleep in the flesh, and see the Dreamland rise! Hark to the gush of golden waterfalls, Or knightly tromps at Archimagian Walls! In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark The River Maid her amber tresses knitting; When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark, And silver clouds oâer summer stars are flitting, With jocund elves invade âthe Mooneâs sphere, Or hang a pearl in every cowslipâs ear;â * Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves Joy into song, the blithe Arcadian Faun Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves, While slowly gleaming through the purple glade Come Evianâs panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid. * âMidsummer Nightâs Dream.â Such, O Ideal World, thy habitants! All the fair children of creative creeds, All the lost tribes of Fantasy are thine,-- From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts, Or Panâs first music waked from shepherd reeds, To the last sprite when Heavenâs pale lamps decline, Heard wailing soft along the solemn Rhine. II. OUR DREAMS BELONG TO THE IDEAL.--THE DIVINER LOVE FOR WHICH YOUTH SIGHS NOT ATTAINABLE IN LIFE, BUT THE PURSUIT OF THAT LOVE BEYOND THE WORLD OF THE SENSES PURIFIES THE SOUL AND AWAKES THE GENIUS.--PETRARCH.--DANTE. Thine are the Dreams that pass the Ivory Gates, With prophet shadows haunting poet eyes! Thine the belovâd illusions youth creates From the dim haze of its own happy skies. In vain we pine; we yearn on earth to win The being of the heart, our boyhoodâs dream. The Psyche and the Eros neâer have been, Save in Olympus, wedded! As a stream Glasses a star, so life the ideal love; Restless the stream below, serene the orb above! Ever the soul the senses shall deceive; Here custom chill, there kinder fate bereave: For mortal lips unmeet eternal vows! And Edenâs flowers for Adamâs mournful brows! We seek to make the momentâs angel guest The household dweller at a human hearth; We chase the bird of Paradise, whose nest Was never found amid the bowers of earth.* * According to a belief in the East, which is associated with one of the loveliest and most familiar of Oriental superstitions, the bird of Paradise is never seen to rest upon the earth, and its nest is never to be found. Yet loftier joys the vain pursuit may bring, Than sate the senses with the boons of time; The bird of Heaven hath still an upward wing, The steps it lures are still the steps that climb; And in the ascent although the soil be bare, More clear the daylight and more pure the air. Let Petrarchâs heart the human mistress lose, He mourns the Laura but to win the Muse. Could all the charms which Georgian maids combine Delight the soul of the dark Florentine, Like one chaste dream of childlike Beatrice Awaiting Hellâs dark pilgrim in the skies, Snatched from below to be the guide above, And clothe Religion in the form of Love?* * It is supposed by many of the commentators on Dante, that in the form of his lost Beatrice, who guides him in his Vision of Heaven, he allegorizes Religious Faith. III. GENIUS, LIFTING ITS LIFE TO THE IDEAL, BECOMES ITSELF A PURE IDEA: IT MUST COMPREHEND ALL EXISTENCE, ALL HUMAN SINS AND SUFFERINGS; BUT IN COMPREHENDING, IT TRANSMUTES THEM.--THE POET IN HIS TWO-FOLD BEING,--THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL.--THE INFLUENCE OF GENIUS OVER THE STERNEST REALITIES OF EARTH; OVER OUR PASSIONS; WARS AND SUPERSTITIONS.--ITS IDENTITY IS WITH HUMAN PROGRESS.--ITS AGENCY, EVEN WHERE UNACKNOWLEDGED, IS UNIVERSAL. Oh, thou true Iris! sporting on thy bow Of tears and smiles! Joveâs herald, Poetry, Thou reflex image of all joy and woe, _Both_ fused in light by thy dear fantasy! Lo! from the clay how Genius lifts its life, And grows one pure Idea, one calm soul! True, its own clearness must reflect our strife; True, its completeness must comprise our whole; But as the sun transmutes the sullen hues Of marsh-grown vapours into vermeil dyes, And melts them later into twilight dews, Shedding on flowers the baptism of the skies; So glows the Ideal in the air we breathe, So from the fumes of sorrow and of sin, Doth its warm light in rosy colours wreathe Its playful cloudland, storing balms within. Survey the Poet in his mortal mould, Man, amongst men, descended from his throne! The moth that chased the star now frets the fold, Our cares, our faults, our follies are his own. Passions as idle, and desires as vain, Vex the wild heart, and dupe the erring brain. From Freedomâs field the recreant Horace flies To kiss the hand by which his country dies; From Maryâs grave the mighty Peasant turns, And hoarse with orgies rings the laugh of Burns. While Rousseauâs lips a lackeyâs vices own,-- Lips that could draw the thunder on a throne! But when from Life the Actual GENIUS springs, When, self-transformed by its own magic rod, It snaps the fetters and expands the wings, And drops the fleshly garb that veiled the god, How the mists vanish as the form ascends! How in its aureole every sunbeam blends! By the Arch-Brightener of Creation seen, How dim the crowns on perishable brows! The snows of Atlas melt beneath the sheen, Through Thebaid caves the rushing splendour flows. Cimmerian glooms with Asian beams are bright, And Earth reposes in a belt of light. Now stern as Vengeance shines the awful form, Armed with the bolt and glowing through the storm; Sets the great deeps of human passion free, And whelms the bulwarks that would breast the sea. Roused by its voice the ghastly Wars arise, Mars reddens earth, the Valkyrs pale the skies; Dim Superstition from her hell escapes, With all her shadowy brood of monster shapes; Here life itself the scowl of Typhon* takes; There Conscience shudders at Alectoâs snakes; From Gothic graves at midnight yawning wide, In gory cerements gibbering spectres glide; And where oâer blasted heaths the lightnings flame, Black secret hags âdo deeds without a name!â Yet through its direst agencies of awe, Light marks its presence and pervades its law, And, like Orion when the storms are loud, It links creation while it gilds a cloud. By ruthless Thor, free Thought, frank Honour stand, Fameâs grand desire, and zeal for Fatherland. The grim Religion of Barbarian Fear With some Hereafter still connects the Here, Lifts the gross sense to some spiritual source, And thrones some Jove above the Titan Force, Till, love completing what in awe began, From the rude savage dawns the thoughtful man. * The gloomy Typhon of Egypt assumes many of the mystic attributes of the Principle of Life which, in the Grecian Apotheosis of the Indian Bacchus, is represented in so genial a character of exuberant joy and everlasting youth. Then, oh, behold the Glorious comforter! Still brightâning worlds but gladdâning now the hearth, Or like the lustre of our nearest star, Fused in the common atmosphere of earth. It sports like hope upon the captiveâs chain; Descends in dreams upon the couch of pain; To wonderâs realm allures the earnest child; To the chaste love refines the instinct wild; And as in waters the reflected beam, Still where we turn, glides with us up the stream, And while in truth the whole expanse is bright, Yields to each eye its own fond path of light,-- So over life the rays of Genius fall, Give each his track because illuming all. IV. FORGIVENESS TO THE ERRORS OF OUR BENEFACTORS. Hence is that secret pardon we bestow In the true instinct of the grateful heart, Upon the Sons of Song. The good they do In the clear world of their Uranian art Endures forever; while the evil done In the poor drama of their mortal scene, Is but a passing cloud before the sun; Space hath no record where the mist hath been. Boots it to us if Shakspeare erred like man? Why idly question that most mystic life? Enoâ the giver in his gifts to scan; To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife, Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay The glorious corn-seed struggled up to day. V. THE IDEAL IS NOT CONFINED TO POETS.--ALGERNON SIDNEY RECOGNIZES HIS IDEAL IN LIBERTY, AND BELIEVES IN ITS TRIUMPH WHERE THE MERE PRACTICAL MAN COULD BEHOLD BUT ITS RUINS; YET LIBERTY IN THIS WORLD MUST EVER BE AN IDEAL, AND THE LAND THAT IT PROMISES CAN BE FOUND BUT IN DEATH. But not to you alone, O Sons Of Song, The wings that float the loftier airs along. Whoever lifts us from the dust we are, Beyond the sensual to spiritual goals; Who from the MOMENT and the SELF afar By deathless deeds allures reluctant souls, Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws,-- Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.* Recall the Wars of Englandâs giant-born, Is Elyotâs voice, is Hampdenâs death in vain? Have all the meteors of the vernal morn But wasted light upon a frozen main? Where is that child of Carnage, Freedom, flown? The Sybarite lolls upon the martyrâs throne. Lewd, ribald jests succeed to solemn zeal; And things of silk to Cromwellâs men of steel. Cold are the hosts the tromps of Ireton thrilled, And hushed the senates Vaneâs large presence filled. In what strong heart doth the old manhood dwell? Where art thou, Freedom? Look! in Sidneyâs cell! There still as stately stands the living Truth, Smiling on age as it had smiled on youth. Her forts dismantled, and her shrines oâerthrown, The headsmanâs block her last dread altar-stone, No sanction left to Reasonâs vulgar hope, Far from the wrecks expands her prophetâs scope. Millennial morns the tombs of Kedron gild, The hands of saints the glorious walls rebuild,-- Till each foundation garnished with its gem, High oâer Gehenna flames Jerusalem! O thou blood-stained Ideal of the free, Whose breath is heard in clarions,--Liberty! Sublimer for thy grand illusions past, Thou springâst to Heaven,--Religion at the last. Alike below, or commonwealths or thrones, Whereâer men gather some crushed victim groans; Only in death thy real form we see, All life is bondage,--souls alone are free. Thus through the waste the wandering Hebrews went, Fire on the march, but cloud upon the tent. At last on Pisgah see the prophet stand, Before his vision spreads the PROMISED LAND; But where revealed the Canaan to his eye?-- Upon the mountain he ascends to die. * What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was.--POPE. VI. YET ALL HAVE TWO ESCAPES INTO THE IDEAL WORLD; NAMELY, MEMORY AND HOPE.--EXAMPLE OF HOPE IN YOUTH, HOWEVER EXCLUDED FROM ACTION AND DESIRE.--NAPOLEONâS SON. Yet whatsoever be our bondage here, All have two portals to the phantom sphere. What hath not glided through those gates that ope Beyond the Hour, to MEMORY or to HOPE! Give Youth the Garden,--still it soars above, Seeks some far glory, some diviner love. Place Age amidst the Golgotha,--its eyes Still quit the graves, to rest upon the skies; And while the dust, unheeded, moulders there, Track some lost angel through cerulean air. Lo! where the Austrian binds, with formal chain, The crownless son of earthâs last Charlemagne,-- Him, at whose birth laughed all the violet vales (While yet unfallen stood thy sovereign star, O Lucifer of nations). Hark, the gales Swell with the shout from all the hosts, whose war Rended the Alps, and crimsoned Memphian Nile,-- âWay for the coming of the Conquerorâs Son: Woe to the Merchant-Carthage of the Isle! Woe to the Scythian ice-world of the Don! O Thunder Lord, thy Lemnian bolts prepare, The Eagleâs eyry hath its eagle heir!â Hark, at that shout from north to south, gray Power Quails on its weak, hereditary thrones; And widowed mothers prophesy the hour Of future carnage to their cradled sons. What! shall our race to blood be thus consigned, And Ate claim an heirloom in mankind? Are these red lots unshaken in the urn? Years pass; approach, pale Questioner, and learn Chained to his rock, with brows that vainly frown, The fallen Titan sinks in darkness down! And sadly gazing through his gilded grate, Behold the child whose birth was as a fate! Far from the land in which his life began; Walled from the healthful air of hardy man; Reared by cold hearts, and watched by jealous eyes, His guardians jailers, and his comrades spies. Each trite convention courtly fears inspire To stint experience and to dwarf desire; Narrows the action to a puppet stage, And trains the eaglet to the starlingâs cage. On the dejected brow and smileless cheek, What weary thought the languid lines bespeak; Till drop by drop, from jaded day to day, The sickly life-streams ooze themselves away. Yet oft in HOPE a boundless realm was thine, That vaguest Infinite,--the Dream of Fame; Son of the sword that first made kings divine, Heir to manâs grandest royalty,--a Name! Then didst thou burst upon the startled world, And keep the glorious promise of thy birth; Then were the wings that bear the bolt unfurled, A monarchâs voice cried, âPlace upon the earth!â A new Philippi gained a second Rome, And the Sonâs sword avenged the greater Caesarâs doom. VII. EXAMPLE OF MEMORY AS LEADING TO THE IDEAL,--AMIDST LIFE HOWEVER HUMBLE, AND IN A MIND HOWEVER IGNORANT.--THE VILLAGE WIDOW. But turn the eye to lifeâs sequestered vale And lowly roofs remote in hamlets green. Oft in my boyhood where the moss-grown pale Fenced quiet graves, a female form was seen; Each eve she sought the melancholy ground, And lingering paused, and wistful looked around. If yet some footstep rustled through the grass, Timorous she shrunk, and watched the shadow pass; Then, when the spot lay lone amidst the gloom, Crept to one grave too humble for a tomb, There silent bowed her face above the dead, For, if in prayer, the prayer was inly said; Still as the moonbeam, paused her quiet shade, Still as the moonbeam, through the yews to fade. Whose dust thus hallowed by so fond a care? What the grave saith not, let the heart declare. On yonder green two orphan children played; By yonder rill two plighted lovers strayed; In yonder shrine two lives were blent in one, And joy-bells chimed beneath a summer sun. Poor was their lot, their bread in labour found; No parent blessed them, and no kindred owned; They smiled to hear the wise their choice condemn; They loved--they loved--and love was wealth to them! Hark--one short week--again the holy bell! Still shone the sun; but dirge like boomed the knell,-- The icy hand had severed breast from breast; Left life to toil, and summoned Death to rest. Full fifty years since then have passed away, Her cheek is furrowed, and her hair is gray. Yet, when she speaks of _him_ (the times are rare), Hear in her voice how youth still trembles there. The very name of that young life that died Still heaves the bosom, and recalls the bride. Lone oâer the widowâs hearth those years have fled, The daily toil still wins the daily bread; No books deck sorrow with fantastic dyes; Her fond romance her woman heart supplies; And, haply in the few still moments given, (Dayâs taskwork done), to memory, death, and heaven, To that unuttered poem may belong Thoughts of such pathos as had beggared song. VIII. HENCE IN HOPE, MEMORY, AND PRAYER, ALL OF US ARE POETS. Yes, while thou hopest, music fills the air, While thou rememberest, life reclothes the clod; While thou canst feel the electric chain of prayer, Breathe but a thought, and be a soul with God! Let not these forms of matter bound thine eye. He who the vanishing point of Human things Lifts from the landscape, lost amidst the sky, Has found the Ideal which the poet sings, Has pierced the pall around the senses thrown, And is himself a poet, though unknown. IX. APPLICATION OF THE POEM TO THE TALE TO WHICH IT IS PREFIXED.--THE RHINE,--ITS IDEAL CHARACTER IN ITS HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY ASSOCIATIONS. Enoâ!--my song is closing, and to thee, Land of the North, I dedicate its lay; As I have done the simple tale to be The drama of this prelude! Faraway Rolls the swift Rhine beneath the starry ray; But to my ear its haunted waters sigh; Its moonlight mountains glimmer on my eye; On wave, on marge, as on a wizardâs glass, Imperial ghosts in dim procession pass; Lords of the wild, the first great Father-men, Their fane the hill-top, and their home the glen; Frowning they fade; a bridge of steel appears With frank-eyed Caesar smiling through the spears; The march moves onwards, and the mirror brings The Gothic crowns of Carlovingian kings Vanished alike! The Hermit rears his Cross, And barbs neigh shrill, and plumes in tumult toss, While (knighthoodâs sole sweet conquest from the Moor) Sings to Arabian lutes the Tourbadour. Not yet, not yet; still glide some lingering shades, Still breathe some murmurs as the starlight fades, Still from her rock I hear the Siren call, And see the tender ghost in Rolandâs mouldering hall! X. APPLICATION OF THE POEM CONTINUED.--THE IDEAL LENDS ITS AID TO THE MOST FAMILIAR AND THE MOST ACTUAL SORROW OF LIFE.--FICTION COMPARED TO SLEEP,--IT STRENGTHENS WHILE IT SOOTHES. Trite were the tale I tell of love and doom, (Whose life hath loved not, whose not mourned a tomb?) But fiction draws a poetry from grief, As art its healing from the withered leaf. Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the sombre truth, Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch! When death the altar and the victim youth, Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the porch. As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail, Clothe the rude hill-tops, lull the Northern gale; With childlike lore the fatal course beguile, And brighten death with Loveâs untiring smile. Along the banks let fairy forms be seen âBy fountain clear, or spangled starlike sheen.â * Let sound and shape to which the sense is dull Haunt the soul opening on the Beautiful. And when at length, the symbol voyage done, Surviving Grief shrinks lonely from the sun, By tender types show Grief what memories bloom From lost delight, what fairies guard the tomb. Scorn not the dream, O world-worn; pause a while, New strength shall nerve thee as the dreams beguile, Stung by the rest, less far shall seem the goal! As sleep to life, so fiction to the soul. * âMidsummer Nightâs Dream.â THE PILGRIMS OF THE RHINE CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO QUEEN NYMPHALIN. IN one of those green woods which belong so peculiarly to our island (for the Continent has its forests, but England its woods) there lived, a short time ago, a charming little fairy called Nymphalin. I believe she is descended from a younger branch of the house of Mab; but perhaps that may only be a genealogical fable, for your fairies are very susceptible to the pride of ancestry, and it is impossible to deny that they fall somewhat reluctantly into the liberal opinions so much in vogue at the present day. However that may be, it is quite certain that all the courtiers in Nymphalinâs domain (for she was a queen fairy) made a point of asserting her right to this illustrious descent; and accordingly she quartered the Mab arms with her own,--three acorns vert, with a grasshopper rampant. It was as merry a little court as could possibly be conceived, and on a fine midsummer night it would have been worth while attending the queenâs balls; that is to say, if you could have got a ticket, a favour not obtained without great interest. But, unhappily, until both men and fairies adopt Mr. Owenâs proposition, and live in parallelograms, they will always be the victims of _ennui_. And Nymphalin, who had been disappointed in love, and was still unmarried, had for the last five or six months been exceedingly tired even of giving balls. She yawned very frequently, and consequently yawning became a fashion. âBut why donât we have some new dances, my Pipalee?â said Nymphalin to her favourite maid of honour; âthese waltzes are very old-fashioned.â âVery old-fashioned,â said Pipalee. The queen gaped, and Pipalee did the same. It was a gala night; the court was held in a lone and beautiful hollow, with the wild brake closing round it on every side, so that no human step could easily gain the spot. Wherever the shadows fell upon the brake a glow-worm made a point of exhibiting itself, and the bright August moon sailed slowly above, pleased to look down upon so charming a scene of merriment; for they wrong the moon who assert that she has an objection to mirth,--with the mirth of fairies she has all possible sympathy. Here and there in the thicket the scarce honeysuckles--in August honeysuckles are somewhat out of season--hung their rich festoons, and at that moment they were crowded with the elderly fairies, who had given up dancing and taken to scandal. Besides the honeysuckle you might see the hawkweed and the white convolvulus, varying the soft verdure of the thicket; and mushrooms in abundance had sprung up in the circle, glittering in the silver moonlight, and acceptable beyond measure to the dancers: every one knows how agreeable a thing tents are in a _fete champetre_! I was mistaken in saying that the brake closed the circle entirely round; for there was one gap, scarcely apparent to mortals, through which a fairy at least might catch a view of a brook that was close at hand, rippling in the stars, and checkered at intervals by the rich weeds floating on the surface, interspersed with the delicate arrowhead and the silver water-lily. Then the trees themselves, in their prodigal variety of hues,--the blue, the purple, the yellowing tint, the tender and silvery verdure, and the deep mass of shade frowning into black; the willow, the elm, the ash, the fir, and the lime, âand, best of all, Old Englandâs haunted oak;â these hues were broken again into a thousand minor and subtler shades as the twinkling stars pierced the foliage, or the moon slept with a richer light upon some favoured glade. It was a gala night; the elderly fairies, as I said before, were chatting among the honeysuckles; the young were flirting, and dancing, and making love; the middle-aged talked politics under the mushrooms; and the queen herself and half-a-dozen of her favourites were yawning their pleasure from a little mound covered with the thickest moss. âIt has been very dull, madam, ever since Prince Fayzenheim left us,â said the fairy Nip. The queen sighed. âHow handsome the prince is!â said Pipalee. The queen blushed. âHe wore the prettiest dress in the world; and what a mustache!â cried Pipalee, fanning herself with her left wing. âHe was a coxcomb,â said the lord treasurer, sourly. The lord treasurer was the honestest and most disagreeable fairy at court; he was an admirable husband, brother, son, cousin, uncle, and godfather,--it was these virtues that had made him a lord treasurer. Unfortunately they had not made him a sensible fairy. He was like Charles the Second in one respect, for he never did a wise thing; but he was not like him in another, for he very often said a foolish one. The queen frowned. âA young prince is not the worse for that,â retorted Pipalee. âHeigho! does your Majesty think his Highness likely to return?â âDonât tease me,â said Nymphalin, pettishly. The lord treasurer, by way of giving the conversation an agreeable turn, reminded her Majesty that there was a prodigious accumulation of business to see to, especially that difficult affair about the emmet-wasp loan. Her Majesty rose; and leaning on Pipaleeâs arm, walked down to the supper tent. âPray,â said the fairy Trip to the fairy Nip, âwhat is all this talk about Prince Fayzenheim? Excuse my ignorance; I am only just out, you know.â âWhy,â answered Nip, a young courtier, not a marrying fairy, but very seductive, âthe story runs thus: Last summer a foreigner visited us, calling himself Prince Fayzenheim: one of your German fairies, I fancy; no great things, but an excellent waltzer. He wore long spurs, made out of the stings of the horse-flies in the Black Forest; his cap sat on one side, and his mustachios curled like the lip of the dragon-flower. He was on his travels, and amused himself by making love to the queen. You canât fancy, dear Trip, how fond she was of hearing him tell stories about the strange creatures of Germany,--about wild huntsmen, water-sprites, and a pack of such stuff,â added Nip, contemptuously, for Nip was a freethinker. âIn short?â said Trip. âIn short, she loved,â cried Nip, with a theatrical air. âAnd the prince?â âPacked up his clothes, and sent on his travelling-carriage, in order that he might go at his ease on the top of a stage-pigeon; in short--as you say--in short, he deserted the queen, and ever since she has set the fashion of yawning.â âIt was very naughty in him,â said the gentle Trip. âAh, my dear creature,â cried Nip, âif it had been you to whom he had paid his addresses!â Trip simpered, and the old fairies from their seats in the honeysuckles observed she was âsadly conducted;â but the Trips had never been too respectable. Meanwhile the queen, leaning on Pipalee, said, after a short pause, âDo you know I have formed a plan!â âHow delightful!â cried Pipalee. âAnother gala!â âPooh, surely even you must be tired with such levities: the spirit of the age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether.â The queen said this with an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the âSociety for the Diffusion of General Stupefactionâ had been recently established among the fairies, and its tracts had driven all the light reading out of the market. âThe Penny Proserâ had contributed greatly to the increase of knowledge and yawning, so visibly progressive among the courtiers. âNo,â continued Nymphalin; âI have thought of something better than galas. Let us travel!â Pipalee clasped her hands in ecstasy. âWhere shall we travel?â âLet us go up the Rhine,â said the queen, turning away her head. âWe shall be amazingly welcomed; there are fairies without number all the way by its banks, and various distant connections of ours whose nature and properties will afford interest and instruction to a philosophical mind.â âNumber Nip, for instance,â cried the gay Pipalee. âThe Red Man!â said the graver Nymphalin. âOh, my queen, what an excellent scheme!â and Pipalee was so lively during the rest of the night that the old fairies in the honeysuckle insinuated that the lady of honour had drunk a buttercup too much of the Maydew. CHAPTER II. THE LOVERS. I WISH only for such readers as give themselves heart and soul up to me,--if they begin to cavil I have done with them; their fancy should put itself entirely under my management; and, after all, ought they not to be too glad to get out of this hackneyed and melancholy world, to be run away with by an author who promises them something new? From the heights of Bruges, a Mortal and his betrothed gazed upon the scene below. They saw the sun set slowly amongst purple masses of cloud, and the lover turned to his mistress and sighed deeply; for her cheek was delicate in its blended roses, beyond the beauty that belongs to the hues of health; and when he saw the sun sinking from the world, the thought came upon him that _she_ was his sun, and the glory that she shed over his life might soon pass away into the bosom of the âever-during Dark.â But against the clouds rose one of the many spires that characterize the town of Bruges; and on that spire, tapering into heaven, rested the eyes of Gertrude Vane. The different objects that caught the gaze of each was emblematic both of the different channel of their thoughts and the different elements of their nature: he thought of the sorrow, she of the consolation; his heart prophesied of the passing away from earth, hers of the ascension into heaven. The lower part of the landscape was wrapped in shade; but just where the bank curved round in a mimic bay, the waters caught the sunâs parting smile, and rippled against the herbage that clothed the shore, with a scarcely noticeable wave. There are two of the numerous mills which are so picturesque a feature of that country, standing at a distance from each other on the rising banks, their sails perfectly still in the cool silence of the evening, and adding to the rustic tranquillity which breathed around. For to me there is something in the still sails of one of those inventions of manâs industry peculiarly eloquent of repose: the rest seems typical of the repose of our own passions, short and uncertain, contrary to their natural ordination; and doubly impressive from the feeling which admonishes us how precarious is the stillness, how utterly dependent on every wind rising at any moment and from any quarter of the heavens! They saw before them no living forms, save of one or two peasants yet lingering by the water-side. Trevylyan drew closer to his Gertrude; for his love was inexpressibly tender, and his vigilant anxiety for her made his stern frame feel the first coolness of the evening even before she felt it herself. âDearest, let me draw your mantle closer round you.â Gertrude smiled her thanks. âI feel better than I have done for weeks,â said she; âand when once we get into the Rhine, you will see me grow so strong as to shock all your interest for me.â âAh, would to Heaven my interest for you may be put to such an ordeal!â said Trevylyan; and they turned slowly to the inn, where Gertrudeâs father already awaited them. Trevylyan was of a wild, a resolute, and an active nature. Thrown on the world at the age of sixteen, he had passed his youth in alternate pleasure, travel, and solitary study. At the age in which manhood is least susceptible to caprice, and most perhaps to passion, he fell in love with the loveliest person that ever dawned upon a poetâs vision. I say this without exaggeration, for Gertrude Vaneâs was indeed the beauty, but the perishable beauty, of a dream. It happened most singularly to Trevylyan (but he was a singular man), that being naturally one whose affections it was very difficult to excite, he should have fallen in love at first sight with a person whose disease, already declared, would have deterred any other heart from risking its treasures on a bark so utterly unfitted for the voyage of life. Consumption, but consumption in its most beautiful shape, had set its seal upon Gertrude Vane, when Trevylyan first saw her, and at once loved. He knew the danger of the disease; he did not, except at intervals, deceive himself; he wrestled against the new passion: but, stern as his nature was, he could not conquer it. He loved, he confessed his love, and Gertrude returned it. In a love like this, there is something ineffably beautiful,--it is essentially the poetry of passion. Desire grows hallowed by fear, and, scarce permitted to indulge its vent in the common channel of the senses, breaks forth into those vague yearnings, those lofty aspirations, which pine for the Bright, the Far, the Unattained. It is âthe desire of the moth for the star;â it is the love of the soul! Gertrude was advised by the faculty to try a southern climate; but Gertrude was the daughter of a German mother, and her young fancy had been nursed in all the wild legends and the alluring visions that belong to the children of the Rhine. Her imagination, more romantic than classic, yearned for the vine-clad hills and haunted forests which are so fertile in their spells to those who have once drunk, even sparingly, of the Literature of the North. Her desire strongly expressed, her declared conviction that if any change of scene could yet arrest the progress of her malady it would be the shores of the river she had so longed to visit, prevailed with her physicians and her father, and they consented to that pilgrimage along the Rhine on which Gertrude, her father, and her lover were now bound. It was by the green curve of the banks which the lovers saw from the heights of Bruges that our fairy travellers met. They were reclining on the water-side, playing at dominos with eye-bright and the black specks of the trefoil; namely, Pipalee, Nip, Trip, and the lord treasurer (for that was all the party selected by the queen for her travelling _cortege_), and waiting for her Majesty, who, being a curious little elf, had gone round the town to reconnoitre. âBless me!â said the lord treasurer; âwhat a mad freak is this! Crossing that immense pond of water! And was there ever such bad grass as this? One may see that the fairies thrive ill here.â âYou are always discontented, my lord,â said Pipalee; âbut then you are somewhat too old to travel,--at least, unless you go in your nutshell and four.â The lord treasurer did not like this remark, so he muttered a peevish pshaw, and took a pinch of honeysuckle dust to console himself for being forced to put up with so much frivolity. At this moment, ere the moon was yet at her middest height, Nymphalin joined her subjects. âI have just returned,â said she, with a melancholy expression on her countenance, âfrom a scene that has almost renewed in me that sympathy with human beings which of late years our race has well-nigh relinquished. âI hurried through the town without noticing much food for adventure. I paused for a moment on a fat citizenâs pillow, and bade him dream of love. He woke in a fright, and ran down to see that his cheeses were safe. I swept with a light wing over a politicianâs eyes, and straightway he dreamed of theatres and music. I caught an undertaker in his first nap, and I have left him whirled into a waltz. For what would be sleep if it did not contrast life? Then I came to a solitary chamber, in which a girl, in her tenderest youth, knelt by the bedside in prayer, and I saw that the death-spirit had passed over her, and the blight was on the leaves of the rose. The room was still and hushed, the angel of Purity kept watch there. Her heart was full of love, and yet of holy thoughts, and I bade her dream of the long life denied to her,--of a happy home, of the kisses of her young lover, of eternal faith, and unwaning tenderness. Let her at least enjoy in dreams what Fate has refused to Truth! And, passing from the room, I found her lover stretched in his cloak beside the door; for he reads with a feverish and desperate prophecy the doom that waits her; and so loves he the very air she breathes, the very ground she treads, that when she has left his sight he creeps, silently and unknown to her, to the nearest spot hallowed by her presence, anxious that while yet she is on earth not an hour, not a moment, should be wasted upon other thoughts than those that belong to her; and feeling a security, a fearful joy, in lessening the distance that _now_ only momentarily divides them. And that love seemed to me not as the love of the common world, and I stayed my wings and looked upon it as a thing that centuries might pass and bring no parallel to, in its beauty and its melancholy truth. But I kept away the sleep from the loverâs eyes, for well I knew that sleep was a tyrant, that shortened the brief time of waking tenderness for the living, yet spared him; and one sad, anxious thought of her was sweeter, in spite of its sorrow, than the brightest of fairy dreams. So I left him awake, and watching there through the long night, and felt that the children of earth have still something that unites them to the spirits of a finer race, so long as they retain amongst them the presence of real love!â And oh! is there not a truth also in our fictions of the Unseen World? Are there not yet bright lingerers by the forest and the stream? Do the moon and the soft stars look out on no delicate and winged forms bathing in their light? Are the fairies and the invisible hosts but the children of our dreams, and not their inspiration? Is that all a delusion which speaks from the golden page? And is the world only given to harsh and anxious travellers that walk to and fro in pursuit of no gentle shadows? Are the chimeras of the passions the sole spirits of the universe? No! while my remembrance treasures in its deepest cell the image of one no more,--one who was ânot of the earth, earthy;â one in whom love was the essence of thoughts divine; one whose shape and mould, whose heart and genius, would, had Poesy never before dreamed it, have called forth the first notion of spirits resembling mortals, but not of them,--no, Gertrude! while I remember you, the faith, the trust in brighter shapes and fairer natures than the world knows of, comes clinging to my heart; and still will I think that Fairies might have watched over your sleep and Spirits have ministered to your dreams. CHAPTER III. FEELINGS. GERTRUDE and her companions proceeded by slow and, to her, delightful stages to Rotterdam. Trevylyan sat by her side, and her hand was ever in his; and when her delicate frame became sensible of fatigue, her head drooped on his shoulder as its natural resting-place. Her father was a man who had lived long enough to have encountered many reverses of fortune, and they had left him, as I am apt to believe long adversity usually does leave its prey, somewhat chilled and somewhat hardened to affection; passive and quiet of hope, resigned to the worst as to the common order of events, and expecting little from the best, as an unlooked-for incident in the regularity of human afflictions. He was insensible of his daughterâs danger, for he was not one whom the fear of love endows with prophetic vision; and he lived tranquilly in the present, without asking what new misfortune awaited him in the future. Yet he loved his child, his only child, with whatever of affection was left him by the many shocks his heart had received; and in her approaching connection with one rich and noble as Trevylyan, he felt even something bordering upon pleasure. Lapped in the apathetic indifference of his nature, he leaned back in the carriage, enjoying the bright weather that attended
{'title': 'The Pilgrims of the Rhine by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}