Albino

“ When he pities he propagates, and in the North his progeny are always unimaginative demonstrations. But Albion's spirit of Obedience and Law, his Angel, compels the youth, as they curse the pained heavens, parental potencies of Urizen, to submit to his ideas. The serpent-temple shadows the island, until Albion's angel in the flames of the desire for a more complete tyranny of literal over spiritual law, howling with a yearning like Orc's fiery passion, seeks the trump, the arousing instrument of the last mood of man, and therefore of the last doom. ”

“ I cannot put off the human form I strive but strive in vain
30 When Albion rent thy beautiful net of gold and silver twine;
Thou hadst woven it with art, thou hadst caught me in the bands
Of love; thou refusedst to let me go: Albion beheld thy beauty
Beautiful thro' our Love's comeliness, beautiful thro' pity.
The Veil shone with thy brightness in the eyes of Albion,
35 Because it inclosd pity & love; because we lov'd one-another!
Albion lov'd thee! he rent thy Veil! he embrac'd thee! he lov'd thee! ”

“ Albano's heart rested upon the season as a head rests upon the executioner's block. Naught did he see in the wide blue of heaven but Liana soaring therein; nothing, nothing on the earth, but her prostrate, empty form.
He felt a sharp pang when suddenly, on the heights of Blumenbühl, the white mountain-palace flashed upon his sight. He ran down wildly along by the abhorred, the transformed, and deformed Blumenbühl, and hurried away up into the deep hollow pass which leads to the mountain-castle. ”

“ No eye looked over to the heights of Blumenbühl, from which, at this very moment, a black train of coaches was passing slowly down, with upright-burning funeral torches, like a moving shadow-realm, to convey the still, good heart, wherein Albano and God lived, with its dead wounds, to the soft place of rest. Flaming rolled the torch-carriage up the mountain-road towards Italy.
Tearless and far-gazing, Albano's eye rested on the glimmering, ceaselessly moving fountain-wheel of time, eternally drawing up constellations in the east, and pouring them out in the west ”

“ On a fresh, blue morning Albano stood, before the resurrection of the sun in heaven, on the high, bloom-encircled pyramid of terraces, where he had once, on awaking, seen his dear father flee without farewell; and he gazed with emotion down into the vacant, broad lake, and around on the summits of the glaciers, which already bloomed in the reflection of Aurora riding down from on high,—and no one was with him but the past. He looked upon himself and into his breast, and thought: "What a long, heavy time has already passed through this bosom since that day! ”

“ Albano felt, at the expression of this new female love, that woman was the human heart in the fairest form. Within him rang a glad melody,—"What a day lies before thee, and what years!" Sweetly entwined and overspun with a canopy of double love-blossoms, he saw life and earth full of fragrance and light; over the morning dew of youth a sun had now been ushered up, and the dark drops glistened up and down through all gardens. ”

“ Albano bore a new world of love and bliss in his bosom; and the youth,—not yet a debtor to the past, but a guest of the present,—sweetly unbent by the long Jubilee of the day, sank into clear-obscure dreams, like a towering bird of prey hanging silent on pinions open with ecstasy. ”

“ Then the silent Albano seized the strings, buried his eye in the gleaming of the mountains, and blushing, began: "Linger awhile, O singer, among the lofty spirits who marched, killing, dying, over the battle-field, and who built up the everlasting temples of humanity; linger among the pure diamonds that remained firm and bright under the hammer of destiny; linger in the olden time, in the sea of Rome, which bore upon its bosom one quarter of the world, and undermined the others; but flee before the time which sank its summit in its own crater. ”

“ Albano stood by when the strange being came up and spake to the mortally sick man, and turned two stiff, glassy eyes, which looked as if they had been set in, quite away from him with whom he spake,—so fantastic, and yet full of the cold world toward his dying brother,—with loosely hanging face-skin upon significant face-bones,—a gray were-wolf on his hind legs, just charmed out of the beastly hide into the human skin,—like the destroying angel, a destroying man, and yet without passion. ”

“ The lightnings reveal swans, sleeping on the waves under clouds drunk with light, and their flaming trains blaze like gold after them in among the thick trees, [44] as goldfishes turn their burning backs out of the water,—and even around thy summit, Albano, the great eyes of the sunflowers turn on thee their fiery looks, as if kindled by the sparks of the glowworms.
"And in this kingdom of light," thought Albano, trembling, "the still angel of my future hides himself and glorifies it, when he appears. O where dwellest thou, good Liana? In that white temple? ”

“ Albano clasped accidentally the neighboring statue with both hands, and said: "On high places, one wants to throw something down,—even himself oftentimes; and I, too, would fain throw myself off into the world, into far-distant lands, as often as I gaze into the nightly redness yonder, and as often as I come under orangery-blossoms, as under these. Brother, how is it with thee? The heavens and the earth open out so broadly: why, then, [Pg 347] must the spirit so creep into itself?" ”

“ Like a sun, his heart goes through his pale thoughts, and quenches on its path one constellation after another. On the earth and in the heavens, in the past and in the future, stood before Albano only one form; "Liana," said his heart, "Liana," said all nature.
He went down the bridge and up the western triumphal-arch, and the glimmering Lilar lay before him in repose. Lo! there he saw the old "pious father" on the balustrade of the arch, fast asleep. But how different was the revered form from the picture of it which he had shaped to himself according to that of the deceased Prince. ”

“ I feel the iron threads of love & jealousy & despair.
50Vala reply'd. Albion is mine! Luvah gave me to Albion
And now recieves reproach & hate. Was it not said of old
Set your Son before a man & he shall take you & your sons
For slaves: but set your Daughter before a man & She
Shall make him & his sons & daughters your slaves for ever!
55And is this Faith? Behold the strife of Albion, & Luvah
Is great in the east, their spears of blood rage in the eastern heaven
Urizen is the champion of Albion, they will slay my Luvah:
And thou O harlot daughter! ”

“ Albano interrupted her, for his feelings were striking against each other like swords, "I revere, but I hate her dangerous phantom. Fancy and sickness are the parents of the air-born, destroying angel, who flies scorching, like a dumb heat-lightning, over all the blossoms of youth!"
She answered, with emotion, "O thou good, pure spirit! thou hast never distressed me, thou hast ever comforted, guided, made me happy and holy,—a phantom is it, Albano? It even preserves me against all phantoms of terror, against all ghostly fear, because it is always about me. ”

“ The shock which his father's ideas gave his own, and the relationship of the potshard mountain to the strangers' churchyard, caused Albano to answer rather himself than his father, with a melted ice-drop of displeasure in his eye: "Such a nameless mountain of pots is, upon the whole, also the history of nations. But one would much rather kill one's self on the spot than, after a long life, to bury one's self so namelessly and ingloriously in the mass at last." ”

“ As Albano was walking along so solitary in his bliss, dissolved in the rapture of love, the fragrance of the vales, the radiance of the heights, dreaming, hovering, he saw birds of passage flying across the sea in the direction of the Apennines, on their way to Germany, where Liana had lived. "Holy One above!" cried his heart, "thou desiredst this joy; appear and bless it!" ”

“ Albano found in this stranger the first friend who ever responded to his whole heart with like tones, the first eye which his shy feelings did not shun, a soul before whose first tear flowers started up out of his whole future life as out of the dry wastes of torrid climes during the rainy season;—hence love gave his strong spirit only the equable, broad motion of a sea, whereas his friend, although older and longer-trained, was a stream with waterfalls. ”

“ Albano held her hand. All the mountain-ridges of his life stood in a glowing dawn. "Liana," said he, "what innumerable springs are there at this moment up yonder on the worlds which hang in the heavens; but this is the fairest!" "Ah, life is lovely, and to-day it is too dear to me! Albano," she added, in a low voice, and her whole face became an exalted, tearless love, and the stars wove and embroidered its bridal dress, "if God calls me, then may he let me always appear to thee as Caroline does to me. ”

“ Like his class, he desired of Albano a right strong backing word to his speech; but Albano said: "This is the very greatness in war, that one can and dare do without exasperated passion, without personal enmity, all that which the weakling can do only by such means; verily it were nobler," said he, "to kill in battle a loved than a hated one." "Silly chimeras!" said the Corsican, angrily; "what? Thou wilt kill the French and yet love them?" Albano's magnanimity threw off at once every timid mask, and he said: "In one word, I shall some time fight for the French and with them." ”

“ When thy little white blossoms have once fallen, they come not again, and around thy fruits only modesty then spreads her foliage.
Painfully did the heart in Albano split into contradictions, as if into two, his own heart and Liana's. She was nothing but pure love and lowliness, and the splendor of her talents was only a foreign border-work, as white marble images of the gods have the variegated border only as decoration: one could not do anything but adore her, even in her errors. On the other hand, she had, in conjunction with tender, susceptible feelings, such firm opinions and errors ”

“ Then the tree with its frozen blossoms stands there in autumn high, broad, green, and fresh, and dark with foliage, but with empty, fruitless twigs.
At last they came out of the sweltry dining-halls into the fresh evening of Lilar, into the open air and freedom. Half indignant, half bewildered with love, Albano went to meet a veiled hour, in which so many a riddle and his dearest one were to be solved. What does man see before him, when with the thread in his hand he steps out of the subterranean labyrinth? ”

“ As Albano was more smitten with edifices than with any other work of art, so did he see from afar with holy awe the long mountain-chain of art, which again bore upon itself hills; so did he stand before the plain, around which two enormous colonnades run like Corsos, bearing a people of statues; in the centre shoots up the obelisk, and on its right and left an eternal fountain, and from the lofty steps the proud church of the world, inwardly filled with churches, rearing upon itself a temple toward heaven, looks down upon the earth. ”

“ And, besides all that, blessed Albano, thou knowest who hears thee. The morning air of hope flutters around thee in tones,—the wild life of youth stalks with vigorous limbs and loud strides up and down before thee,—the moonlight, undesecrated by any gross earthly light, hallows the sounding apartment. Liana's last songs lie open before thee, and the advancing moonshine will let thee read them soon,—and the nightingale in the mother's neighboring chamber contends with thy tones, as if summoned by the Tuba to the field. ”

“ Albano's hand, still on his, had for some time slipped down from his father's heart along the sharp-edged steel chain of his order to the golden, metal-cold lamb that hung from it. The youth, like all young men and hermits, had too severe notions of courtiers and men of the world: he held them to be decided basilisks and dragons,—although I can still excuse that, if he means by basilisks only what the naturalists mean,—wingless lizards,—and by dragons, nothing but winged ones, and thus regards them only as amphibia, hardly less cold and odious than Linnæus defines such to be. ”

“ O how one loves, Albano, when all around us crumbles and sinks and melts away in smoke, and when, still, the bond and splendor of love stand firm and inviolate on the fleeting ground of life, as I have often seen with emotion, when standing by waterfalls, a rainbow hover, undisturbed and unchanged, over the bursting, impetuous floods! O, would that the nightingales were [Pg 462] yet singing; now I could sing with them! Thy Æolian-harp, my harmonica, how gladly would I have it in my hand! My father was with us, and more cheerful and friendly toward all than ever. ”

“ To-day Albano had such a day for the first time. Ah, years often pass away and bring no such day! While he went thus roaming along on both sides of the mountain ridge, the northeast wind began to flow fuller and fuller to meet him;—without wind, a landscape was to him a stiff, fast-nailed wall-tapestry;—and now the wind rolled the solid land over into a fluid state. The neighboring trees shook themselves like doves sweetly shuddering in its bath, but in the distance the woods stood fast, like hosts in battle array, and their summits like lances. ”

“ He asked me whether the director of the wax-figure travelling madhouse had encountered me. I could not place much confidence in him; I have the secret alone."
"Thou art a wild, true man," said Albano, with such an intense desire to embrace him; "thou dost much for others, and art, after all, much for thyself. I can now leave thee no more. My former life-island, with all its flowers, lies deep under water, and I must cast myself into the infinite sea of the world. ”