George MacDonald

“ With a wail of sorrow the lady rose to her feet. “Ah! he loves me not; he loves me not even as I love him; and alas! I care more for his love than even for the freedom I ask.”
“I will not wait to be willing,” cried Cosmo; and sprang to the corner where the great sword stood.
Meantime it had grown very dark; only the embers cast a red glow through the room. He seized the sword by the steel scabbard, and stood before the mirror; but as he heaved a great blow at it with the heavy pommel, the blade slipped half-way out of the scabbard, and the pommel struck the wall above the mirror. ”

“ This has a great effect in causing the landscapes to differ from those on the earth. On the stillest evening, no tall ship on the sea sends a long wavering reflection almost to the feet of him on shore; the face of no maiden brightens at its own beauty in a still forest-well. The sun and moon alone make a glitter on the surface. The sea is like a sea of death, ready to ingulf and never to reveal: a visible shadow of oblivion. Yet the women sport in its waters like gorgeous sea-birds. The men more rarely enter them. ”

“ I followed them with this, for a closing song:
Oh, well for him who breaks his dream With the blow that ends the strife And, waking, knows the peace that flows Around the pain of life! We are dead, my brothers! Our bodies clasp, As an armour, our souls about; This hand is the battle-axe I grasp, And this my hammer stout. Fear not, my brothers, for we are dead; No noise can break our rest; The calm of the grave is about the head, And the heart heaves not the breast. And our life we throw to our people back, To live with, a further store ”

“ A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again. Alas, how hardly things go right! ‘Tis hard to watch on a summer night, For the sigh will come and the kiss will stay, And the summer night is a winter day. “Oh, lovely ghosts my heart is woes To see thee weeping and wailing so. Oh, lovely ghost,” said the fearless knight, “Can the sword of a warrior set it right? Or prayer of bedesman, praying mild, As a cup of water a feverish child, Sooth thee at last, in dreamless mood To sleep the sleep a dead lady should? ”

“ I wandered long, up and down the silent space: no songs came. My soul was not still enough for songs. Only in the silence and darkness of the soul’s night, do those stars of the inward firmament sink to its lower surface from the singing realms beyond, and shine upon the conscious spirit. Here all effort was unavailing. If they came not, they could not be found.
Next night, it was just the same. I walked through the red glimmer of the silent hall; but lonely as there I walked, as lonely trod my soul up and down the halls of the brain. At last I entered one of the statue-halls. ”

“ Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child, with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the tube through which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds the same thing everywhere; the other that through which he looks when he combines into new forms of loveliness those images of beauty which his own choice has gathered from all regions wherein he has travelled. Round the child’s head was an aureole of emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and delight, round crept from behind me the something dark, and the child stood in my shadow. ”

“ But her beauty shone down all its adornment. “If I might have but one of her feet to kiss,” thought Cosmo, “I should be content.” Alas! he deceived himself, for passion is never content. Nor did he know that there are two ways out of her enchanted house. But, suddenly, as if the pang had been driven into his heart from without, revealing itself first in pain, and afterwards in definite form, the thought darted into his mind, “She has a lover somewhere. Remembered words of his bring the colour on her face now. I am nowhere to her. ”

“ I took the pieces, all black, and wet with crying over them, to the Fairy Queen. There was no music and no light in them now. But she took them from me, and laid them aside; and made me go to sleep in a great hall of white, with black pillars, and many red curtains. When I woke in the morning, I went to her, hoping to have my globe again, whole and sound; but she sent me away without it, and I have not seen it since. Nor do I care for it now. I have something so much better. I do not need the globe to play to me; for I can sing. ”

“ Thine eyes they fill me with longing sore, As if I had known thee for evermore. Oh, lovely ghost, I could leave the day To sit with thee in the moon away If thou wouldst trust me, and lay thy head To rest on a bosom that is not dead.” The lady sprang up with a strange ghost-cry, And she flung her white ghost-arms on high: And she laughed a laugh that was not gay, And it lengthened out till it died away; And the dead beneath turned and moaned, And the yew-trees above they shuddered and groaned. “Will he love me twice with a love that is vain? Will he kill the poor ghost yet again? ”

“ But what surprised me more than all, was, that the room was in every respect a copy of my own room, the room whence the little stream from my basin had led me into Fairy Land. There was the very carpet of grass and moss and daisies, which I had myself designed; the curtains of pale blue silk, that fell like a cataract over the windows; the old-fashioned bed, with the chintz furniture, on which I had slept from boyhood. “Now I shall sleep,” I said to myself. “My shadow dares not come here.” ”

“ Hope beat violently in my heart.
“Now,” said I to myself, “if yet another part of the dream would but come true, and I should succeed in surprising these forms in their nightly dance; it might be the rest would follow, and I should see on the pedestal my marble queen. Then surely if my songs sufficed to give her life before, when she lay in the bonds of alabaster, much more would they be sufficient then to give her volition and motion, when she alone of assembled crowds of marble forms, would be standing rigid and cold.”
But the difficulty was, to surprise the dancers. ”

“ I opened the door; and there in the cottage sat the old woman as I had left her, at her spinning-wheel.
“I did not expect you quite so soon,” she said, as I shut the door behind me. I went up to the couch, and threw myself on it with that fatigue wherewith one awakes from a feverish dream of hopeless grief.
The old woman sang:
The great sun, benighted, May faint from the sky; But love, once uplighted, Will never more die. Form, with its brightness, From eyes will depart: It walketh, in whiteness, The halls of the heart. ”

“ For just what the flower says to you, would the face and form of the fairy say; only so much more plainly as a face and human figure can express more than a flower. For the house or the clothes, though like the inhabitant or the wearer, cannot be wrought into an equal power of utterance. Yet you would see a strange resemblance, almost oneness, between the flower and the fairy, which you could not describe, but which described itself to you. Whether all the flowers have fairies, I cannot determine, any more than I can be sure whether all men and women have souls. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And a pale moon looked up from the floor of the great blue cave that lay in the abysmal silence beneath.
Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call the reality?—not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still. Yea, the reflecting ocean itself, reflected in the mirror, has a wondrousness about its waters that somewhat vanishes when I turn towards itself. All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass. ”

“ But the knight he kneeled by the lady’s side; Kneeled beside her in wondrous bliss, Rapt in an everlasting kiss: Though never his lips come the lady nigh, And his eyes alone on her beauty lie. All the night long, till the cock crew loud, He kneeled by the lady, lapt in her shroud. And what they said, I may not say: Dead night was sweeter than living day. How she made him so blissful glad Who made her and found her so ghostly sad, I may not tell; but it needs no touch To make them blessed who love so much. “Come every night, my ghost, to me; And one night I will come to thee. ”

“ My soul was like a summer evening, after a heavy fall of rain, when the drops are yet glistening on the trees in the last rays of the down-going sun, and the wind of the twilight has begun to blow. The hot fever of life had gone by, and I breathed the clear mountain-air of the land of Death. I had never dreamed of such blessedness. It was not that I had in any way ceased to be what I had been. The very fact that anything can die, implies the existence of something that cannot die; which must either take to itself another form, as when the seed that is sown dies, and arises again ”

“ Great boughs crossed my path; great roots based the tree-columns, and mightily clasped the earth, strong to lift and strong to uphold. It seemed an old, old forest, perfect in forest ways and pleasures. And when, in the midst of this ecstacy, I remembered that under some close canopy of leaves, by some giant stem, or in some mossy cave, or beside some leafy well, sat the lady of the marble, whom my songs had called forth into the outer world, waiting (might it not be?) ”

“ At the same time I, being a man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should fare among the elves and other children of the night who wake when mortals dream, and find their common life in those wondrous hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat them down, and hold them drowned and senseless, until the ebbtide comes, and the waves sink away, back into the ocean of the dark. ”

“ I loved the knight more and more. I believe never squire served his master with more care and joyfulness than I. I tended his horse; I cleaned his armour; my skill in the craft enabled me to repair it when necessary; I watched his needs; and was well repaid for all by the love itself which I bore him.
“This,” I said to myself, “is a true man. I will serve him, and give him all worship, seeing in him the imbodiment of what I would fain become. If I cannot be noble myself, I will yet be servant to his nobleness.” ”

“ My voice burst into song so spontaneously that it seemed involuntarily.
“Not a sound But, echoing in me, Vibrates all around With a blind delight, Till it breaks on Thee, Queen of Night! Every tree, O’ershadowing with gloom, Seems to cover thee Secret, dark, love-still’d, In a holy room Silence-filled. “Let no moon Creep up the heaven to-night; I in darksome noon Walking hopefully, Seek my shrouded light— Grope for thee! “Darker grow The borders of the dark! Through the branches glow, From the roof above, Star and diamond-sparks Light for love.” ”

“ It carried its rose-hue within; for now I could love without needing to be loved again. The moon came gliding up with all the past in her wan face. She changed my couch into a ghostly pallor, and threw all the earth below as to the bottom of a pale sea of dreams. But she could not make me sad. I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. ”

“ Even the memories of past pain are beautiful; and past delights, though beheld only through clefts in the grey clouds of sorrow, are lovely as Fairy Land. But how have I wandered into the deeper fairyland of the soul, while as yet I only float towards the fairy palace of Fairy Land! The moon, which is the lovelier memory or reflex of the down-gone sun, the joyous day seen in the faint mirror of the brooding night, had rapt me away. ”

“ It was followed, however, by the comforting reflection that, peradventure, I might here find the magic word of power to banish the demon and set me free, so that I should no longer be a man beside myself. The Queen of Fairy Land, thought I, must dwell here: surely she will put forth her power to deliver me, and send me singing through the further gates of her country back to my own land. “Shadow of me!” I said; “which art not me, but which representest thyself to me as me; here I may find a shadow of light which will devour thee, the shadow of darkness! ”

“ And lo! beside him the ghost-girl shone; Shone like the light on a harbour’s breast, Over the sea of his dream’s unrest; Shone like the wondrous, nameless boon, That the heart seeks ever, night or noon: Warnings forgotten, when needed most, He clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost. She wailed aloud, and faded, and sank. With upturn’d white face, cold and blank, In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale, And she came no more to Sir Aglovaile. Only a voice, when winds were wild, Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child. Alas, how easily things go wrong! ”

“ Like a sudden apparition that comes and is gone, a white form, veiled in a light robe of whiteness, burst upwards from the stone, stood, glided forth, and gleamed away towards the woods. For I followed to the mouth of the cave, as soon as the amazement and concentration of delight permitted the nerves of motion again to act; and saw the white form amidst the trees, as it crossed a little glade on the edge of the forest where the sunlight fell full, seeming to gather with intenser radiance on the one object that floated rather than flitted through its lake of beams. ”