PARACELSUS INSCRIBED TO AMÉDÉE DE RIPERT-MONCLAR BY HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND

Aureolus Paracelsus, a student. Festus and Michal, his friends. Aprile, an Italian poet.

Paracelsus. Come close to me, dear friends; still closer; thus! Close to the heart which, though long time roll by Ere it again beat quicker, pressed to yours, As now it beats—perchance a long, long time— At least henceforth your memories shall make Quiet and fragrant as befits their home. Nor shall my memory want a home in yours— Alas, that it requires too well such free Forgiving love as shall embalm it there! For if you would remember me aright, As I was born to be, you must forget All fitful, strange and moody waywardness Which e'er confused my better spirit, to dwell Only on moments such as these, dear friends! —My heart no truer, but my words and ways More true to it: as Michal, some months hence, Will say, "this autumn was a pleasant time," For some few sunny days; and overlook Its bleak wind, hankering after pining leaves. Autumn would fain be sunny; I would look Liker my nature's truth: and both are frail, And both beloved, for all our frailty. Michal. Aureole! Par. Drop by drop! she is weeping like a child! Not so! I am content—more than content; Nay, autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay: Look up, sweet Michal, nor esteem the less Your stained and drooping vines their grapes bow down, Nor blame those creaking trees bent with their fruit, That apple-tree with a rare after-birth Of peeping blooms sprinkled its wealth among! Then for the winds—what wind that ever raved Shall vex that ash which overlooks you both, So proud it wears its berries? Ah, at length, The old smile meet for her, the lady of this Sequestered nest!—this kingdom, limited Alone by one old populous green wall Tenanted by the ever-busy flies. Gray crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders, Each family of the silver-threaded moss— Which, look through near, this way, and it appears A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh Of bulrush whitening in the sun: laugh now! Fancy the crickets, each one in his house, Looking out, wondering at the world—or best, Yon painted snail with his gay shell of dew, Travelling to see the glossy balls high up Hung by the caterpillar, like gold lamps. Mich. In truth we have lived carelessly and well. Par. And shall, my perfect pair!—each, trust me, born For the other; nay, your very hair, when mixed, Is of one hue. For where save in this nook Shall you two walk, when I am far away, And wish me prosperous fortune? Stay: that plant Shall never wave its tangles lightly and softly, As a queen's languid and imperial arm Which scatters crowns among her lovers, but you Shall be reminded to predict to me Some great success! Ah see, the sun sinks broad Behind Saint Saviour's: wholly gone, at last! Festus. Now, Aureole, stay those wandering eyes awhile! You are ours to-night, at least; and while you spoke Of Michal and her tears, I thought that none Could willing leave what he so seemed to love: But that last look destroys my dream—that look As if, where'er you gazed, there stood a star! How far was Würzburg with its church and spire And garden-walls and all things they contain, From that look's far alighting? Par. I but spoke And looked alike from simple joy to see The beings I love best, shut in so well From all rude chances like to be my lot, That, when afar, my weary spirit,—disposed To lose awhile its care in soothing thoughts Of them, their pleasant features, looks and words,— Needs never hesitate, nor apprehend Encroaching trouble may have readied them too, Nor have recourse to fancy's busy aid And fashion even a wish in their behalf Beyond what they possess already here; But, unobstructed, may at once forget Itself in them, assured how well they fare. Beside, this Festus knows he holds me one Whom quiet and its charms arrest in vain, One scarce aware of all the joys I quit, Too filled with airy hopes to make account Of soft delights his own heart garners up: Whereas behold how much our sense of all That's beauteous proves alike! When Festus learns That every common pleasure of the world Affects me as himself; that I have just As varied appetite for joy derived From common things; a stake in life, in short, Like his; a stake which rash pursuit of aims That life affords not, would as soon destroy;— He may convince himself that, this in view, I shall act well advised. And last, because, Though heaven and earth and all things were at stake, Sweet Michal must not weep, our parting eve. Fest. True: and the eve is deepening, and we sit As little anxious to begin our talk As though to-morrow I could hint of it As we paced arm-in-arm the cheerful town At sun-dawn; or could whisper it by fits (Trithemius busied with his class the while) In that dim chamber where the noon-streaks peer Half-frightened by the awful tomes around; Or in some grassy lane unbosom all From even-blush to midnight: but, to-morrow! Have I full leave to tell my inmost mind? We have been brothers, and henceforth the world Will rise between us:—all my freest mind? 'T is the last night, dear Aureole! Par. Oh, say on! Devise some test of love, some arduous feat To be performed for you: say on! If night Be spent the while, the better! Recall how oft My wondrous plans and dreams and hopes and fears Have—never wearied you, oh no!—as I Recall, and never vividly as now, Your true affection, born when Einsiedeln And its green hills were all the world to us; And still increasing to this night which ends My further stay at Würzburg. Oh, one day You shall be very proud! Say on, dear friends! Fest. In truth? 'T is for my proper peace, indeed, Rather than yours; for vain all projects seem To stay your course: I said my latest hope Is fading even now. A story tells Of some far embassy despatched to win The favor of an eastern king, and how The gifts they offered proved but dazzling dust Shed from the ore-beds native to his clime. Just so, the value of repose and love, I meant should tempt you, better far than I You seem to comprehend; and yet desist No whit from projects where repose nor love Has part. Par. Once more? Alas! As I foretold. Fest. A solitary brier the bank puts forth To save our swan's nest floating out to sea. Par. Dear Festus, hear me. What is it you wish? That I should lay aside my heart's pursuit, Abandon the sole ends for which I live, Reject God's great commission, and so die! You bid me listen for your true love's sake: Yet how has grown that love? Even in a long And patient cherishing of the self-same spirit It now would quell; as though a mother hoped To stay the lusty manhood of the child Once weak upon her knees. I was not born Informed and fearless from the first, but shrank From aught which marked me out apart from men: I would have lived their life, and died their death, Lost in their ranks, eluding destiny: But you first guided me through doubt and fear, Taught me to know mankind and know myself; And now that I am strong and full of hope, That, from my soul, I can reject all aims Save those your earnest words made plain to me, Now that I touch the brink of my design, When I would have a triumph in their eyes, A glad cheer in their voices—Michal weeps, And Festus ponders gravely! Fest. When you deign To hear my purpose ... Par. Hear it? I can say Beforehand all this evening's conference! 'T is this way, Michal, that he uses: first, Or he declares, or I, the leading points Of our best scheme of life, what is man's end And what God's will; no two faiths e'er agreed As his with mine. Next, each of us allows Faith should be acted on as best we may; Accordingly, I venture to submit My plan, in lack of better, for pursuing The path which God's will seems to authorize. Well, he discerns much good in it, avows This motive worthy, that hope plausible, A danger here to be avoided, there An oversight to be repaired: in fine, Our two minds go together—all the good Approved by him, I gladly recognize, All he counts bad, I thankfully discard, And naught forbids my looking up at last For some stray comfort in his cautious brow. When lo! I learn that, spite of all, there lurks Some innate and inexplicable germ Of failure in my scheme; so that at last It all amounts to this—the sovereign proof That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were; A life which, prompted by the sad and blind Folly of man, Festus abhors the most; But which these tenets sanctify at once, Though to less subtle wits it seems the same, Consider it how they may. Mich. Is it so, Festus? He speaks so calmly and kindly: is it so? Par. Reject those glorious visions of God's love And man's design; laugh loud that God should send Vast longings to direct us; say how soon Power satiates these, or lust, or gold; I know The world's cry well, and how to answer it. But this ambiguous warfare ... Fest. ... Wearies so That you will grant no last leave to your friend To urge it?—for his sake, not yours? I wish To send my soul in good hopes after you; Never to sorrow that uncertain words Erringly apprehended, a new creed Ill understood, begot rash trust in you, Had share in your undoing. Par. Choose your side, Hold or renounce: but meanwhile blame me not Because I dare to act on your own views, Nor shrink when they point onward, nor espy A peril where they most ensure success. Fest. Prove that to me—but that! Prove you abide Within their warrant, nor presumptuous boast God's labor laid on you; prove, all you covet, A mortal may expect; and, most of all, Prove the strange course you now affect, will lead To its attainment—and I bid you speed, Nay, count the minutes till you venture forth! You smile; but I had gathered from slow thought— Much musing on the fortunes of my friend— Matter I deemed could not be urged in vain; But it all leaves me at my need: in shreds And fragments I must venture what remains. Mich. Ask at once, Festus, wherefore he should scorn.... Fest. Stay, Michal: Aureole, I speak guardedly And gravely, knowing well, whate'er your error, This is no ill-considered choice of yours, No sudden fancy of an ardent boy. Not from your own confiding words alone Am I aware your passionate heart long since Gave birth to, nourished and at length matures This scheme. I will not speak of Einsiedeln, Where I was born your elder by some years Only to watch you fully from the first: In all beside, our mutual tasks were fixed Even then—'t was mine to have you in my view As you had your own soul and those intents Which filled it when, to crown your dearest wish, With a tumultuous heart, you left with me Our childhood's home to join the favored few Whom, here, Trithemius condescends to teach A portion of his lore: and not one youth Of those so favored, whom you now despise, Came earnest as you came, resolved, like you, To grasp all, and retain all, and deserve By patient toil a wide renown like his. Now, this new ardor which supplants the old I watched, too; 't was significant and strange, In one matched to his soul's content at length With rivals in the search for wisdom's prize, To see the sudden pause, the total change; From contest, the transition to repose— From pressing onward as his fellows pressed, To a blank idleness, yet most unlike The dull stagnation of a soul, content, Once foiled, to leave betimes a thriveless quest. That careless bearing, free from all pretence Even of contempt for what it ceased to seek— Smiling humility, praising much, yet waiving What it professed to praise—though not so well Maintained but that rare outbreaks, fierce and brief, Revealed the hidden scorn, as quickly curbed. That ostentatious show of past defeat, That ready acquiescence in contempt, I deemed no other than the letting go His shivered sword, of one about to spring Upon his foe's throat; but it was not thus: Not that way looked your brooding purpose then. For after-signs disclosed, what you confirmed, That you prepared to task to the uttermost Your strength, in furtherance of a certain aim Which—while it bore the name your rivals gave Their own most puny efforts—was so vast In scope that it included their best flights, Combined them, and desired to gain one prize In place of many,—the secret of the world, Of man, and man's true purpose, path and fate. —That you, not nursing as a mere vague dream This purpose, with the sages of the past, Have struck upon a way to this, if all You trust be true, which following, heart and soul, You, if a man may, dare aspire to KNOW: And that this aim shall differ from a host Of aims alike in character and kind, Mostly in this,—that in itself alone Shall its reward be, not an alien end Blending therewith; no hope nor fear nor joy Nor woe, to elsewhere move you, but this pure Devotion to sustain you or betray: Thus you aspire. Par. You shall not state it thus: I should not differ from the dreamy crew You speak of. I profess no other share In the selection of my lot, than this My ready answer to the will of God Who summons me to be his organ. All Whose innate strength supports them shall succeed No better than the sages. Fest. Such the aim, then, God sets before you; and 't is doubtless need That he appoint no less the way of praise Than the desire to praise; for, though I hold, With you, the setting forth such praise to be The natural end and service of a man, And hold such praise is best attained when man Attains the general welfare of his kind— Yet this, the end, is not the instrument. Presume not to serve God apart from such Appointed channel as he wills shall gather Imperfect tributes, for that sole obedience Valued perchance! He seeks not that his altars Blaze, careless how, so that they do but blaze. Suppose this, then; that God selected you To Know (heed well your answers, for my faith Shall meet implicitly what they affirm), I cannot think you dare annex to such Selection aught beyond a steadfast will, An intense hope; nor let your gifts create Scorn or neglect of ordinary means Conducive to success, make destiny Dispense with man's endeavor. Now, dare you search Your inmost heart, and candidly avow Whether you have not rather wild desire For this distinction than security Of its existence? whether you discern The path to the fulfilment of your purpose Clear as that purpose—and again, that purpose Clear as your yearning to be singled out For its pursuer. Dare you answer this? Par. (after a pause). No, I have naught to fear! Who will may know The secret'st workings of my soul. What though It be so?—if indeed the strong desire Eclipse the aim in me?—if splendor break Upon the outset of my path alone, And duskest shade succeed? What fairer seal Shall I require to my authentic mission Than this fierce energy?—this instinct striving Because its nature is to strive?—enticed By the security of no broad course, Without success forever in its eyes! How know I else such glorious fate my own, But in the restless irresistible force That works within me? Is it for human will To institute such impulses?—still less, To disregard their promptings! What should I Do, kept among you all; your loves, your cares, Your life—all to be mine? Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart! Ask the geier-eagle why she stoops at once Into the vast and unexplored abyss, What full-grown power informs her from the first, Why she not marvels, strenuously beating The silent boundless regions of the sky! Be sure they sleep not whom God needs! Nor fear Their holding light his charge, when every hour That finds that charge delayed, is a new death. This for the faith in which I trust; and hence I can abjure so well the idle arts These pedants strive to learn and teach; Black Arts, Great Works, the Secret and Sublime, forsooth— Let others prize: too intimate a tie Connects me with our God! A sullen fiend To do my bidding, fallen and hateful sprites To help me—what are these, at best, beside God helping, God directing everywhere, So that the earth shall yield her secrets up, And every object there be charged to strike, Teach, gratify her master God appoints? And I am young, my Festus, happy and free! I can devote myself; I have a life To give; I, singled out for this, the One! Think, think! the wide East, where all Wisdom sprung; The bright South, where she dwelt; the hopeful North, All are passed o'er—it lights on me! 'T is time New hopes should animate the world, new light Should dawn from new revealings to a race Weighed down so long, forgotten so long; thus shall The heaven reserved for us at last receive Creatures whom no unwonted splendors blind, But ardent to confront the unclouded blaze, Whose beams not seldom blessed their pilgrimage, Not seldom glorified their life below. Fest. My words have their old fate and make faint stand Against your glowing periods. Call this, truth— Why not pursue it in a fast retreat, Some one of Learning's many palaces, After approved example?—seeking there Calm converse with the great dead, soul to soul, Who laid up treasure with the like intent —So lift yourself into their airy place, And fill out full their unfulfilled careers, Unravelling the knots their baffled skill Pronounced inextricable, true!—but left Far less confused. A fresh eye, a fresh hand, Might do much at their vigor's waning-point; Succeeding with new-breathed new-hearted force, As at old games the runner snatched the torch From runner still: this way success might be. But you have coupled with your enterprise An arbitrary self-repugnant scheme Of seeking it in strange and untried paths. What books are in the desert? Writes the sea The secret of her yearning in vast caves Where yours will fall the first of human feet? Has wisdom sat there and recorded aught You press to read? Why turn aside from her To visit, where her vesture never glanced, Now—solitudes consigned to barrenness By God's decree, which who shall dare impugn? Now—ruins where she paused but would not stay, Old ravaged cities that, renouncing her, She called an endless curse on, so it came: Or worst of all, now—men you visit, men, Ignoblest troops who never heard her voice Or hate it, men without one gift from Rome Or Athens,—these shall Aureole's teachers be! Rejecting past example, practice, precept, Aidless 'mid these he thinks to stand alone: Thick like a glory round the Stagirite Your rivals throng, the sages: here stand you! Whatever you may protest, knowledge is not Paramount in your love; or for her sake You would collect all help from every source— Rival, assistant, friend, foe, all would merge In the broad class of those who showed her haunts, And those who showed them not. Par. What shall I say? Festus, from childhood I have been possessed By a fire—by a true fire, or faint or fierce, As from without some master, so it seemed, Repressed or urged its current: this but ill Expresses what I would convey: but rather I will believe an angel ruled me thus, Than that my soul's own workings, own high nature, So became manifest. I knew not then What whispered in the evening, and spoke out At midnight. If some mortal, born too soon, Were laid away in some great trance—the ages Coming and going all the while—till dawned His true time's advent; and could then record The words they spoke who kept watch by his bed,— Then I might tell more of the breath so light Upon my eyelids, and the fingers light Among my hair. Youth is confused; yet never So dull was I but, when that spirit passed, I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns A water-snake when fairies cross his sleep. And having this within me and about me While Einsiedeln, its mountains, lakes and woods Confined me—what oppressive joy was mine When life grew plain, and I first viewed the thronged, The everlasting concourse of mankind! Believe that ere I joined them, ere I knew The purpose of the pageant, or the place Consigned me in its ranks—while, just awake, Wonder was freshest and delight most pure— 'T was then that least supportable appeared A station with the brightest of the crowd, A portion with the proudest of them all. And from the tumult in my breast, this only Could I collect, that I must thenceforth die Or elevate myself far, far above The gorgeous spectacle. I seemed to long At once to trample on, yet save mankind, To make some unexampled sacrifice In their behalf, to wring some wondrous good From heaven or earth for them, to perish, winning Eternal weal in the act: as who should dare Pluck out the angry thunder from its cloud, That, all its gathered flame discharged on him, No storm might threaten summer's azure sleep: Yet never to be mixed with men so much As to have part even in my own work, share In my own largess. Once the feat achieved, I would withdraw from their officious praise, Would gently put aside their profuse thanks. Like some knight traversing a wilderness, Who, on his way, may chance to free a tribe Of desert-people from their dragon-foe; When all the swarthy race press round to kiss His feet, and choose him for their king, and yield Their poor tents, pitched among the sand-hills, for His realm: and he points, smiling, to his scarf Heavy with riveled gold, his burgonet Gay set with twinkling stones—and to the East, Where these must be displayed! Fest. Good: let us hear No more about your nature, "which first shrank From all that marked you out apart from men!" Par. I touch on that; these words but analyze The first mad impulse: 't was as brief as fond, For as I gazed again upon the show, I soon distinguished here and there a shape Palm-wreathed and radiant, forehead and full eye. Well pleased was I their state should thus at once Interpret my own thoughts:—"Behold the clue To all," I rashly said, "and what I pine To do, these have accomplished: we are peers. They know and therefore rule: I too, will know!" You were beside me, Festus, as you say; You saw me plunge in their pursuits whom fame Is lavish to attest the lords of mind, Not pausing to make sure the prize in view Would satiate my cravings when obtained, But since they strove I strove. Then came a slow And strangling failure. We aspired alike, Yet not the meanest plodder, Tritheim counts A marvel, but was all-sufficient, strong Or staggered only at his own vast wits; While I was restless, nothing satisfied, Distrustful, most perplexed. I would slur over That struggle; suffice it, that I loathed myself As weak compared with them, yet felt somehow A mighty power was brooding, taking shape Within me; and this lasted till one night When, as I sat revolving it and more, A still voice from without said—"Seest thou not, Desponding child, whence spring defeat and loss? Even from thy strength. Consider: hast thou gazed Presumptuously on wisdom's countenance, No veil between; and can thy faltering hands, Unguided by the brain the sight absorbs, Pursue their task as earnest blinkers do Whom radiance ne'er distracted? Live their life If thou wouldst share their fortune, choose their eyes Unfed by splendor. Let each task present Its petty good to thee. Waste not thy gifts In profitless waiting for the gods' descent, But have some idol of thine own to dress With their array. Know, not for knowing's sake, But to become a star to men forever; Know, for the gain it gets, the praise it brings, The wonder it inspires, the love it breeds: Look one step onward, and secure that step!" And I smiled as one never smiles but once, Then first discovering my own aim's extent, Which sought to comprehend the works of God, And God himself, and all God's intercourse With the human mind; I understood, no less, My fellows' studies, whose true worth I saw, But smiled not, well aware who stood by me. And softer came the voice—"There is a way: 'T is hard for flesh to tread therein, imbued With frailty—hopeless, if indulgence first Have ripened inborn germs of sin to strength: Wilt thou adventure for my sake and man's, Apart from all reward?" And last it breathed— "Be happy, my good soldier; I am by thee, Be sure, even to the end!"—I answered not, Knowing him. As he spoke, I was endued With comprehension and a steadfast will; And when he ceased, my brow was sealed his own. If there took place no special change in me, How comes it all things wore a different hue Thenceforward?—pregnant with vast consequence, Teeming with grand result, loaded with fate? So that when, quailing at the mighty range Of secret truths which yearn for birth, I haste To contemplate undazzled some one truth, Its bearings and effects alone—at once What was a speck expands into a star, Asking a life to pass exploring thus, Till I near craze. I go to prove my soul! I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first, I ask not: but unless God send his hail Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and the bird. In his good time! Mich. Vex him no further, Festus; it is so! Fest. Just thus you help me ever. This would hold Were it the trackless air, and not a path Inviting you, distinct with footprints yet Of many a mighty marcher gone that way. You may have purer views than theirs, perhaps, But they were famous in their day—the proofs Remain. At least accept the light they lend. Par. Their light! the sum of all is briefly this: They labored and grew famous, and the fruits Are best seen in a dark and groaning earth Given over to a blind and endless strife With evils, what of all their lore abates? No; I reject and spurn them utterly And all they teach. Shall I still sit beside Their dry wells, with a white lip and filmed eye, While in the distance heaven is blue above Mountains where sleep the unsunned tarns? Fest. And yet As strong delusions have prevailed ere now. Men have set out as gallantly to seek Their ruin. I have heard of such: yourself Avow all hitherto have failed and fallen. Mich. Nay, Festus, when but as the pilgrims faint Through the drear way, do you expect to see Their city dawn amid the clouds afar? Par. Ay, sounds it not like some old well-known tale? For me, I estimate their works and them So rightly, that at times I almost dream I too have spent a life the sages' way, And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance I perished in an arrogant self-reliance Ages ago; and in that act, a prayer For one more chance went up so earnest, so Instinct with better light let in by death, That life was blotted out—not so completely But scattered wrecks enough of it remain, Dim memories, as now, when once more seems The goal in sight again. All which, indeed, Is foolish, and only means—the flesh I wear, The earth I tread, are not more clear to me Than my belief, explained to you or no. Fest. And who am I, to challenge and dispute That clear belief? I will divest all fear. Mich. Then Aureole is God's commissary! he shall Be great and grand—and all for us! Par. No, sweet! Not great and grand. If I can serve mankind 'T is well; but there our intercourse must end: I never will be served by those I serve. Fest. Look well to this; here is a plague-spot, here, Disguise it how you may! 'T is true, you utter This scorn while by our side and loving us; 'T is but a spot as yet: but it will break Into a hideous blotch if overlooked. How can that course be safe which from the first Produces carelessness to human love? It seems you have abjured the helps which men Who overpass their kind, as you would do, Have humbly sought; I dare not thoroughly probe This matter, lest I learn too much. Let be That popular praise would little instigate Your efforts, nor particular approval Reward you; put reward aside; alone You shall go forth upon your arduous task, None shall assist you, none partake your toil, None share your triumph: still you must retain Some one to cast your glory on, to share Your rapture with. Were I elect like you, I would encircle me with love, and raise A rampart of my fellows; it should seem Impossible for me to fail, so watched By gentle friends who made my cause their own. They should ward off fate's envy—the great gift, Extravagant when claimed by me alone, Being so a gift to them as well as me. If danger daunted me or ease seduced, How calmly their sad eyes should gaze reproach! Mich. O Aureole, can I sing when all alone, Without first calling, in my fancy, both To listen by my side—even I! And you? Do you not feel this? Say that you feel this! Par. I feel 't is pleasant that my aims, at length Allowed their weight, should be supposed to need A further strengthening in these goodly helps! My course allures for its own sake, its sole Intrinsic worth; and ne'er shall boat of mine Adventure forth for gold and apes at once. Your sages say, "if human, therefore weak:" If weak, more need to give myself entire To my pursuit; and by its side, all else... No matter! I deny myself but little In waiving all assistance save its own. Would there were some real sacrifice to make! Your friends the sages threw their joys away, While I must be content with keeping mine. Fest. But do not cut yourself from human weal! You cannot thrive—a man that dares effect To spend his life in service to his kind For no reward of theirs, unbound to them By any tie; nor do so, Aureole! No— There are strange punishments for such. Give up (Although no visible good flow thence) some part Of the glory to another; hiding thus, Even from yourself, that all is for yourself. Say, say almost to God—"I have done all For her, not for myself!" Par. And who but lately Was to rejoice in my success like you? Whom should I love but both of you? Fest. I know not: But know this, you, that 't is no will of mine You should abjure the lofty claims you make; And this the cause—I can no longer seek To overlook the truth, that there would be A monstrous spectacle upon the earth, Beneath the pleasant sun, among the trees: —A being knowing not what love is. Hear me! You are endowed with faculties which bear Annexed to them as 't were a dispensation To summon meaner spirits to do their will And gather round them at their need; inspiring Such with a love themselves can never feel, Passionless 'mid their passionate votaries. I know not if you joy in this or no, Or ever dream that common men can live On objects you prize lightly, but which make Their heart's sole treasure: the affections seem Beauteous at most to you, which we must taste Or die: and this strange quality accords, I know not how, with you; sits well upon That luminous brow, though in another it scowls An eating brand, a shame. I dare not judge you. The rules of right and wrong thus set aside, There's no alternative—I own you one Of higher order, under other laws Than bind us; therefore, curb not one bold glance! 'T is best aspire. Once mingled with us all... Mich. Stay with us, Aureole! cast those hopes away, And stay with us! An angel warns me, too, Man should be humble; you are very proud: And God, dethroned, has doleful plagues for such! —Warns me to have in dread no quick repulse, No slow defeat, but a complete success: You will find all you seek, and perish so! Par. (after a pause). Are these the barren first-fruits of my quest? Is love like this the natural lot of all? How many years of pain might one such hour O'erbalance? Dearest Michal, dearest Festus, What shall I say, if not that I desire To justify your love; and will, dear friends, In swerving nothing from my first resolves. See, the great moon! and ere the mottled owls Were wide awake, I was to go. It seems You acquiesce at last in all save this— If I am like to compass what I seek By the untried career I choose; and then, If that career, making but small account Of much of life's delight, will yet retain Sufficient to sustain my soul: for thus I understand these fond fears just expressed. And first; the lore you praise and I neglect, The labors and the precepts of old time, I have not lightly disesteemed. But, friends, Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception—which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know, Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly The demonstration of a truth, its birth, And you trace back the effluence to its spring And source within us; where broods radiance vast, To be elicited ray by ray, as chance Shall favor: chance—for hitherto, your sage Even as he knows not how those beams are born, As little knows he what unlocks their fount: And men have oft grown old among their books To die case-hardened in their ignorance, Whose careless youth had promised what long years Of unremitted labor ne'er performed: While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day, To autumn loiterers just as fancy-free As the midges in the sun, gives birth at last To truth—produced mysteriously as cape Of cloud grown out of the invisible air. Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all, The lowest as the highest? some slight film The interposing bar which binds a soul And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage Some film removed, the happy outlet whence Truth issues proudly? See this soul of ours! How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled By age and waste, set free at last by death: Why is it, flesh enthralls it or enthrones? What is this flesh we have to penetrate? Oh, not alone when life flows still, do truth And power emerge, but also when strange chance Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture, When sickness breaks the body—hunger, watching, Excess or languor—oftenest death's approach, Peril, deep joy or woe. One man shall crawl Through life surrounded with all stirring things, Unmoved; and he goes mad: and from the wreck Of what he was, by his wild talk alone, You first collect how great a spirit he hid. Therefore, set free the soul alike in all, Discovering the true laws by which the flesh Accloys the spirit! We may not be doomed To cope with seraphs, but at least the rest Shall cope with us. Make no more giants, God, But elevate the race at once! We ask To put forth just our strength, our human strength, All starting fairly, all equipped alike, Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted— See if we cannot beat thine angels yet! Such is my task. I go to gather this The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed About the world, long lost or never found. And why should I be sad or lorn of hope? Why ever make man's good distinct from God's, Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust? Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me? Mine is no mad attempt to build a world Apart from his, like those who set themselves To find the nature of the spirit they bore, And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams Were only born to vanish in this life, Refused to fit them to its narrow sphere, But chose to figure forth another world And other frames meet for their vast desires,— And all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest! And all for yielding with a lively spirit A poor existence, parting with a youth Like those who squander every energy Convertible to good, on painted toys, Breath-bubbles, gilded dust! And though I spurn All adventitious aims, from empty praise To love's award, yet whoso deems such helps Important, and concerns himself for me, May know even these will follow with the rest— As in the steady rolling Mayne, asleep Yonder, is mixed its mass of schistous ore. My own affections, laid to rest awhile, Will waken purified, subdued alone By all I have achieved. Till then—till then ... Ah, the time-wiling loitering of a page Through bower and over lawn, till eve shall bring The stately lady's presence whom he loves— The broken sleep of the fisher whose rough coat Enwraps the queenly pearl—these are faint types! See, see, they look on me: I triumph now! But one thing, Festus, Michal! I have told All I shall e'er disclose to mortal: say— Do you believe I shall accomplish this? Fest. I do believe! Mich. I ever did believe! Par. Those words shall never fade from out my brain! This earnest of the end shall never fade! Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal, Two points in the adventure of the diver, One—when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge, One—when, a prince, he rises with his pearl? Festus, I plunge! Fest. We wait you when you rise!

Over the waters in the vaporous West The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold Behind the arm of the city, which between, With all that length of domes and minarets, Athwart the splendor, black and crooked runs Like a Turk verse along a scimitar. There lie, sullen memorial, and no more Possess my aching sight! 'T is done at last. Strange—and the juggles of a sallow cheat Have won me to this act! 'T is as yon cloud Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a mountain-top And break upon a molehill. I have dared Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for once The heights already reached, without regard To the extent above; fairly compute All I have clearly gained; for once excluding A brilliant future to supply and perfect All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes: And all because a fortune-teller wills His credulous seekers should inscribe thus much Their previous life's attainment, in his roll, Before his promised secret, as he vaunts, Make up the sum: and here, amid the scrawled Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results! A few blurred characters suffice to note A stranger wandered long through many lands And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few Discoveries, as appended here and there, The fragmentary produce of much toil, In a dim heap, fact and surmise together Confusedly massed as when acquired; he was Intent on gain to come too much to stay And scrutinize the little gained: the whole Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber And a mad lover's ditty—there it lies. And yet those blottings chronicle a life— A whole life, and my life! Nothing to do, No problem for the fancy, but a life Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this Remembrancer set down concerning "life"? "'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,' It is the echo of time; and he whose heart Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech Was copied from a human tongue, can never Recall when he was living yet knew not this. Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing, It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after, An altered brow and eye and gait and speech Attest that now he knows the adage true, 'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'" Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same hour As well as any: now, let my time be! Now! I can go no farther; well or ill, 'T is done. I must desist and take my chance. I cannot keep on the stretch: 't is no back-shrinking— For let but some assurance beam, some close To my toil grow visible, and I proceed At any price, though closing it, I die. Else, here I pause. The old Greek's prophecy Is like to turn out true: "I shall not quit His chamber till I know what I desire!" Was it the light wind sang it o'er the sea? An end, a rest! strange how the notion, once Encountered, gathers strength by moments! Rest! Where has it kept so long? this throbbing brow To cease, this beating heart to cease, all cruel And gnawing thoughts to cease! To dare let down My strung, so high-strung brain, to dare unnerve My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my place, My portion, my reward, even my failure, Assigned, made sure forever! To lose myself Among the common creatures of the world, To draw some gain from having been a man, Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length! Even in failure, rest! But rest in truth And power and recompense ... I hoped that once! What, sunk insensibly so deep? Has all Been undergone for this? This the request My labor qualified me to present With no fear of refusal? Had I gone Slightingly through my task, and so judged fit To moderate my hopes; nay, were it now My sole concern to exculpate myself, End things or mend them,—why, I could not choose A humbler mood to wait for the event! No, no, there needs not this; no, after all, At worst I have performed my share of the task: The rest is God's concern; mine, merely this, To know that I have obstinately held By my own work. The mortal whose brave foot Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so far That he descries at length the shrine of shrines, Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes, Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten now Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no— He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last, Having a charm to baffle them; behold, He bares his front: a mortal ventures thus Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms! If he be priest henceforth, if he wake up The god of the place to ban and blast him there, Both well! What's failure or success to me? I have subdued my life to the one purpose Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy, No doubt, that way I may be satisfied. Yes, well have I subdued my life! beyond The obligation of my strictest vow, The contemplation of my wildest bond, Which gave my nature freely up, in truth, But in its actual state, consenting fully All passionate impulses its soil was formed To rear, should wither; but foreseeing not The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness, Would seem one day, remembered as it was, Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is, Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then. I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frail I felt them not; yet now, 't is very plain Some soft spots had their birth in me at first, If not love, say, like love: there was a time When yet this wolfish hunger after knowledge Set not remorselessly love's claims aside. This heart was human once, or why recall Einsiedeln, now, and Würzburg which the Mayne Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm? And Festus—my poor Festus, with his praise And counsel and grave fears—where is he now With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride? I surely loved them—that last night, at least, When we ... gone! gone! the better. I am saved The sad review of an ambitious youth Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth, But let grow up and wind around a will Till action was destroyed. No, I have gone Purging my path successively of aught Wearing the distinct likeness of such lusts. I have made life consist of one idea: Ere that was master, up till that was born, I bear a memory of a pleasant life Whose small events I treasure; till one morn I ran o'er the seven little grassy fields, Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to tell Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy, To leave all trouble for my future plans, Since I had just determined to become The greatest and most glorious man on earth. And since that morn all life has been forgotten: All is one day, one only step between The outset and the end: one tyrant all- Absorbing aim fills up the interspace, One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept up Through a career apparently adverse To its existence: life, death, light and shadow, The shows of the world, were bare receptacles Or indices of truth to be wrung thence, Not ministers of sorrow or delight: A wondrous natural robe in which she went. For some one truth would dimly beacon me From mountains rough with pines, and flit and wink O'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and tremble Into assured light in some branching mine Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold— And all the beauty, all the wonder fell On either side the truth, as its mere robe; I see the robe now—then I saw the form. So far, then, I have voyaged with success, So much is good, then, in this working sea Which parts me from that happy strip of land: But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too! And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough, And still more faint as the sea widens; last I sicken on a dead gulf streaked with light From its own putrefying depths alone. Then, God was pledged to take me by the hand; Now, any miserable juggle can bid My pride depart. All is alike at length: God may take pleasure in confounding pride By hiding secrets with the scorned and base— I am here, in short: so little have I paused Throughout! I never glanced behind to know If I had kept my primal light from wane, And thus insensibly am—what I am! Oh, bitter; very bitter! And more bitter, To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin, Plague beneath plague, the last turning the first To light beside its darkness. Let me weep My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone, In tears which burn! Would I were sure to win Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change To opal shafts!—only that, hurling it Indignant back, I might convince myself My aims remained supreme and pure as ever! Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake, That if I fail, some fault may be the cause, That, though I sink, another may succeed? O God, the despicable heart of us! Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart! 'T was politic in you, Aureole, to reject Single rewards, and ask them in the lump; At all events, once launched, to hold straight on: For now 't is all or nothing. Mighty profit Your gains will bring if they stop short of such Full consummation! As a man, you had A certain share of strength; and that is gone Already in the getting these you boast. Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say— "Great master, we are here indeed, dragged forth To light; this hast thou done: be glad! Now, seek The strength to use which thou hast spent in getting!" And yet 't is much, surely 't is very much, Thus to have emptied youth of all its gifts, To feed a fire meant to hold out till morn Arrived with inexhaustible light; and lo, I have heaped up my last, and day dawns not! And I am left with gray hair, faded hands, And furrowed brow. Ha, have I, after all, Mistaken the wild nursling of my breast? Knowledge it seemed, and power, and recompense! Was she who glided through my room of nights, Who laid my head on her soft knees and smoothed The damp locks,—whose sly soothings just began When my sick spirit craved repose awhile— God! was I fighting sleep off for death's sake? God! Thou art mind! Unto the master-mind Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone! All else I will endure; if, as I stand Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me down, I bow me; 't is thy will, thy righteous will; I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die; And if no trace of my career remain Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the wind In these bright chambers level with the air, See thou to it! But if my spirit fail, My once proud spirit forsake me at the last, Hast thou done well by me? So do not thou! Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be crushed! Hold me before the frequence of thy seraphs And say,—"I crushed him, lest he should disturb My law. Men must not know their strength: behold, Weak and alone, how he had raised himself!" But if delusions trouble me, and thou, Not seldom felt with rapture in thy help Throughout my toils and wanderings, dost intend To work man's welfare through my weak endeavor, To crown my mortal forehead with a beam From thine own blinding crown, to smile, and guide This puny hand and let the work so wrought Be styled my work,—hear me! I covet not An influx of new power, an angel's soul: It were no marvel then—but I have reached Thus far, a man; let me conclude, a man! Give but one hour of my first energy, Of that invincible faith, but only one! That I may cover with an eagle-glance The truths I have, and spy some certain way To mould them, and completing them, possess! Yet God is good: I started sure of that, And why dispute it now? I'll not believe But some undoubted warning long ere this Had reached me: a fire-labarum was not deemed Too much for the old founder of these walls. Then, if my life has not been natural, It has been monstrous: yet, till late, my course So ardently engrossed me, that delight, A pausing and reflecting joy, 't is plain, Could find no place in it. True, I am worn; But who clothes summer, who is life itself? God, that created all things, can renew! And then, though after-life to please me now Must have no likeness to the past, what hinders Reward from springing out of toil, as changed As bursts the flower from earth and root and stalk? What use were punishment, unless some sin Be first detected? let me know that first! No man could ever offend as I have done ... (A voice from within.) I hear a voice, perchance I heard Long ago, but all too low, So that scarce a care it stirred If the voice were real or no: I heard it in my youth when first The waters of my life outburst: But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear That voice, still low, but fatal-clear— As if all poets, God ever meant Should save the world, and therefore lent Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused To do his work, or lightly used Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavor, So, mourn cast off by him forever,— As if these leaned in airy ring To take me; this the song they sing. "Lost, lost! yet come, With our wan troop make thy home. Come, come! for we Will not breathe, so much as breathe Reproach to thee, Knowing what thou sink'st beneath. So sank we in those old years, We who bid thee, come! thou last Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast. And altogether we, thy peers, Will pardon crave for thee, the last Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast With those who watch but work no more, Who gaze on life but live no more. Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak The message which our lips, too weak, Refused to utter,—shouldst redeem Our fault: such trust, and all a dream! Yet we chose thee a birthplace Where the richness ran to flowers: Couldst not sing one song for grace? Not make one blossom man's and ours? Must one more recreant to his race Die with unexerted powers, And join us, leaving as he found The world, he was to loosen, bound? Anguish! ever and forever; Still beginning, ending never! Yet, lost and last one, come! How couldst understand, alas, What our pale ghosts strove to say, As their shades did glance and pass Before thee night and day? Thou wast blind as we were dumb: Once more, therefore, come, O come! How should we clothe, how arm the spirit Shall next thy post of life inherit— How guard him from thy speedy ruin? Tell us of thy sad undoing Here, where we sit, ever pursuing Our weary task, ever renewing Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave Our powers, and man they could not save!" (Aprile enters.) Ha, ha! our king that wouldst be, here at last? Art thou the poet who shall save the world? Thy hand to mine! Stay, fix thine eyes on mine! Thou wouldst be king? Still fix thine eyes on mine! Par. Ha, ha! why crouchest not? Am I not king? So torture is not wholly unavailing! Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from thy lair? Art thou the sage I only seemed to be, Myself of after-time, my very self With sight a little clearer, strength more firm, Who robes him in my robe and grasps my crown For just a fault, a weakness, a neglect? I scarcely trusted God with the surmise That such might come, and thou didst hear the while! Aprile. Thine eyes are lustreless to mine: my hair Is soft, nay silken soft: to talk with thee Flushes my cheek, and thou art ashy-pale. Truly, thou hast labored, hast withstood her lips, The siren's! Yes, 't is like thou hast attained! Tell me, dear master, wherefore now thou comest? I thought thy solemn songs would have their meed In after-time; that I should hear the earth Exult in thee and echo with thy praise, While I was laid forgotten in my grave. Par. Ah fiend, I know thee, I am not thy dupe! Thou art ordained to follow in my track, Reaping my sowing, as I scorned to reap The harvest sown by sages passed away. Thou art the sober searcher, cautious striver, As if, except through me, thou hast searched or striven! Ay, tell the world! Degrade me after all, To an aspirant after fame, not truth— To all but envy of thy fate, be sure! Apr. Nay, sing them to me; I shall envy not: Thou shalt be king! Sing thou, and I will sit Beside, and call deep silence for thy songs, And worship thee, as I had ne'er been meant To fill thy throne: but none shall ever know! Sing to me; for already thy wild eyes Unlock my heart-strings, as some crystal-shaft Reveals by some chance blaze its parent fount After long time: so thou reveal'st my soul. All will flash forth at last, with thee to hear! Par. (His secret! I shall get his secret—fool!) I am he that aspired to know: and thou? Apr. I would love infinitely, and be loved! Par. Poor slave! I am thy king indeed. Apr. Thou deem'st That—born a spirit, dowered even as thou, Born for thy fate—because I could not curb My yearnings to possess at once the full Enjoyment, but neglected all the means Of realizing even the frailest joy, Gathering no fragments to appease my want, Yet nursing up that want till thus I die— Thou deem'st I cannot trace thy safe sure march O'er perils that o'erwhelm me, triumphing, Neglecting naught below for aught above, Despising nothing and ensuring all— Nor that I could (my time to come again) Lead thus my spirit securely as thine own. Listen, and thou shalt see I know thee well. I would love infinitely ... Ah, lost! lost! Oh ye who armed me at such cost, How shall I look on all of ye With your gifts even yet on me? Par. (Ah, 't is some moonstruck creature after all! Such fond fools as are like to haunt this den: They spread contagion, doubtless: yet he seemed To echo one foreboding of my heart So truly, that ... no matter! How he stands With eve's last sunbeam staying on his hair Which turns to it as if they were akin: And those clear smiling eyes of saddest blue Nearly set free, so far they rise above The painful fruitless striving of the brow And enforced knowledge of the lips, firm-set In slow despondency's eternal sigh! Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the cause?) I charge thee, by thy fealty, be calm! Tell me what thou wouldst be, and what I am. Apr. I would love infinitely, and be loved. First: I would carve in stone, or cast in brass, The forms of earth. No ancient hunter lifted Up to the gods by his renown, no nymph Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland tree Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star, Should be too hard for me; no shepherd-king Regal for his white locks; no youth who stands Silent and very calm amid the throng, His right hand ever hid beneath his robe Until the tyrant pass; no lawgiver, No swan-soft woman rubbed with lucid oils Given by a god for love of her—too hard! Every passion sprung from man, conceived by man, Would I express and clothe it in its right form, Or blend with others struggling in one form, Or show repressed by an ungainly form. Oh, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit With a fit frame to execute its will— Even unconsciously to work its will— You should be moved no less beside some strong Rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body, Endeavoring to subdue it and inform it With its own splendor! All this I would do: And I would say, this done, "His sprites created, God grants to each a sphere to be its world, Appointed with the various objects needed To satisfy its own peculiar want; So, I create a world for these my shapes Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength!" And, at the word, I would contrive and paint Woods, valleys, rocks and plains, dells, sands and wastes, Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quivering bed, Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun, And ocean isles so small, the dog-fish tracking A dead whale, who should find them, would swim thrice Around them, and fare onward—all to hold The offspring of my brain. Nor these alone: Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt, Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces, Marts, theatres, and wharfs—all filled with men, Men everywhere! And this performed in turn, When those who looked on, pined to hear the hopes And fears and hates and loves which moved the crowd, I would throw down the pencil as the chisel, And I would speak; no thought which ever stirred A human breast should be untold; all passions, All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir Within a heart fed with desires like mine, To the last comfort shutting the tired lids Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well: And this in language as the need should be, Now poured at once forth in a burning flow, Now piled up in a grand array of words. This done, to perfect and consummate all, Even as a luminous haze links star to star, I would supply all chasms with music, breathing Mysterious motions of the soul, no way To be defined save in strange melodies. Last, having thus revealed all I could love, Having received all love bestowed on it, I would die: preserving so throughout my course God full on me, as I was full on men: He would approve my prayer, "I have gone through The loveliness of life; create for me If not for men, or take me to thyself, Eternal, infinite love!" If thou hast ne'er Conceived this mighty aim, this full desire, Thou hast not passed my trial, and thou art No king of mine. Par. Ah me! Apr. But thou art here! Thou didst not gaze like me upon that end Till thine own powers for compassing the bliss Were blind with glory; nor grow mad to grasp At once the prize long patient toil should claim, Nor spurn all granted short of that. And I Would do as thou, a second time: nay, listen! Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great, Our time so brief, 't is clear if we refuse The means so limited, the tools so rude To execute our purpose, life will fleet, And we shall fade, and leave our task undone. We will be wise in time: what though our work Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service, Be crippled every way? 'T were little praise Did full resources wait on our goodwill At every turn. Let all be as it is. Some say the earth is even so contrived That tree and flower, a vesture gay, conceal A bare and skeleton framework. Had we means Answering to our mind! But now I seem Wrecked on a savage isle: how rear thereon My palace? Branching palms the props shall be, Fruit glossy mingling; gems are for the East; Who heeds them? I can pass them. Serpents' scales, And painted birds' down, furs and fishes' skins Must help me; and a little here and there Is all I can aspire to: still my art Shall show its birth was in a gentler clime. "Had I green jars of malachite, this way I'd range them: where those sea-shells glisten above, Cressets should hang, by right: this way we set The purple carpets, as these mats are laid, Woven of fern and rush and blossoming flag." Or if, by fortune, some completer grace Be spared to me, some fragment, some slight sample Of the prouder workmanship my own home boasts, Some trifle little heeded there, but here The place's one perfection—with what joy Would I enshrine the relic, cheerfully Foregoing all the marvels out of reach! Could I retain one strain of all the psalm Of the angels, one word of the fiat of God, To let my followers know what such things are! I would adventure nobly for their sakes: When nights were still, and still the moaning sea, And far away I could descry the land Whence I departed, whither I return, I would dispart the waves, and stand once more At home, and load my bark, and hasten back, And fling my gains to them, worthless or true. "Friends," I would say, "I went far, far for them, Past the high rocks the haunt of doves, the mounds Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out, Past tracts of milk-white minute blinding sand, Till, by a mighty moon, I tremblingly Gathered these magic herbs, berry and bud, In haste, not pausing to reject the weeds, But happy plucking them at any price. To me, who have seen them bloom in their own soil, They are scarce lovely: plait and wear them, you! And guess, from what they are, the springs that fed them, The stars that sparkled o'er them, night by night, The snakes that travelled far to sip their dew!" Thus for my higher loves; and thus even weakness Would win me honor. But not these alone Should claim my care; for common life, its wants And ways, would I set forth in beauteous hues: The lowest hind should not possess a hope, A fear, but I'd be by him, saying better Than he his own heart's language. I would live Forever in the thoughts I thus explored, As a discoverer's memory is attached To all he finds; they should be mine henceforth, Imbued with me, though free to all before: For clay, once cast into my soul's rich mine, Should come up crusted o'er with gems. Nor this Would need a meaner spirit than the first; Nay, 't would be but the selfsame spirit, clothed In humbler guise, but still the selfsame spirit: As one spring wind unbinds the mountain snow And comforts violets in their hermitage. But, master, poet, who hast done all this, How didst thou 'scape the ruin whelming me? Didst thou, when nerving thee to this attempt, Ne'er range thy mind's extent, as some wide hall, Dazzled by shapes that filled its length with light, Shapes clustered there to rule thee, not obey, That will not wait thy summons, will not rise Singly, nor when thy practised eye and hand Can well transfer their loveliness, but crowd By thee forever, bright to thy despair? Didst thou ne'er gaze on each by turns, and ne'er Resolve to single out one, though the rest Should vanish, and to give that one, entire In beauty, to the world; forgetting, so, Its peers, whose number baffles mortal power? And, this determined, wast thou ne'er seduced By memories and regrets and passionate love, To glance once more farewell? and did their eyes Fasten thee, brighter and more bright, until Thou couldst but stagger back unto their feet, And laugh that man's applause or welfare ever Could tempt thee to forsake them? Or when years Had passed and still their love possessed thee wholly, When from without some murmur startled thee Of darkling mortals famished for one ray Of thy so-hoarded luxury of light, Didst thou ne'er strive even yet to break those spells And prove thou couldst recover and fulfil Thy early mission, long ago renounced, And to that end, select some shape once more? And did not mist-like influences, thick films, Faint memories of the rest that charmed so long Thine eyes, float fast, confuse thee, bear thee off, As whirling snow-drifts blind a man who treads A mountain ridge, with guiding spear, through storm? Say, though I fell, I had excuse to fall; Say, I was tempted sorely: say but this, Dear lord, Aprile's lord! Par. Clasp me not thus, Aprile! That the truth should reach me thus! We are weak dust. Nay, clasp not or I faint! Apr. My king! and envious thoughts could outrage thee? Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice In thy success, as thou! Let our God's praise Go bravely through the world at last! What care Through me or thee? I feel thy breath. Why, tears? Tears in the darkness, and from thee to me? Par. Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both! We wake at length from weary dreams; but both Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and drear Appears the world before us, we no less Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still. I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE— Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge. Still thou hast beauty and I, power. We wake: What penance canst devise for both of us? Apr. I hear thee faintly. The thick darkness! Even Thine eyes are hid, 'T is as I knew: I speak, And now I die. But I have seen thy face! O poet, think of me, and sing of me! But to have seen thee and to die so soon! Par. Die not, Aprile! We must never part. Are we not halves of one dissevered world, Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? never! Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower, Love—until both are saved. Aprile, hear! We will accept our gains, and use them—now! God, he will die upon my breast! Aprile! Apr. To speak but once, and die! yet by his side. Hush! hush! Ha! go you ever girt about With phantoms, powers? I have created such, But these seem real as I. Par. Whom can you see Through the accursed darkness? Apr. Stay; I know, I know them: who should know them well as I? White brows, lit up with glory; poets all! Par. Let him but live, and I have my reward! Apr. Yes; I see now. God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations. Had you but told me this at first! Hush! hush! Par. Live! for my sake, because of my great sin, To help my brain, oppressed by these wild words And their deep import. Live! 't is not too late. I have a quiet home for us, and friends. Michal shall smile on you. Hear you? Lean thus, And breathe my breath. I shall not lose one word Of all your speech, one little word, Aprile! Apr. No, no. Crown me? I am not one of you! 'T is he, the king, you seek. I am not one. Par. Thy spirit, at least, Aprile! Let me love. I have attained, and now I may depart.

Scene, Basel: a chamber in the house of Paracelsus. 1526. Paracelsus, Festus. Par. Heap logs and let the blaze laugh out! Fest. True, true! 'T is very fit all, time and chance and change Have wrought since last we sat thus, face to face And soul to soul—all cares, far-looking fears, Vague apprehensions, all vain fancies bred By your long absence, should be cast away, Forgotten in this glad unhoped renewal Of our affections. Par. Oh, omit not aught Which witnesses your own and Michal's own Affection: spare not that! Only forget The honors and the glories and what not, It pleases you to tell profusely out. Fest. Nay, even your honors, in a sense, I waive: The wondrous Paracelsus, life's dispenser, Fate's commissary, idol of the schools And courts, shall be no more than Aureole still, Still Aureole and my friend as when we parted Some twenty years ago, and I restrained As best I could the promptings of my spirit Which secretly advanced you, from the first, To the pre-eminent rank which, since, your own Adventurous ardor nobly triumphing, Has won for you. Par. Yes, yes. And Michal's face Still wears that quiet and peculiar light Like the dim circlet floating round a pearl? Fest. Just so. Par. And yet her calm sweet countenance, Though saintly, was not sad; for she would sing Alone. Does she still sing alone, bird-like, Not dreaming you are near? Her carols dropt In flakes through that old leafy bower built under The sunny wall at Würzburg, from her lattice Among the trees above, while I, unseen, Sat conning some rare scroll from Tritheim's shelves, Much wondering notes so simple could divert My mind from study. Those were happy days. Respect all such as sing when all alone! Fest. Scarcely alone: her children, yon may guess, Are wild beside her. Par. Ah, those children quite Unsettle the pure picture in my mind: A girl, she was so perfect, so distinct: No change, no change! Not but this added grace May blend and harmonize with its compeers, And Michal may become her motherhood; But 't is a change, and I detest all change, And most a change in aught I loved long since. So, Michal—you have said she thinks of me? Fest. O very proud will Michal be of you! Imagine how we sat, long winter-nights, Scheming and wondering, shaping your presumed Adventure, or devising its reward; Shutting out fear with all the strength of hope. For it was strange how, even when most secure In our domestic peace, a certain dim And flitting shade could sadden all; it seemed A restlessness of heart, a silent yearning, A sense of something wanting, incomplete— Not to be put in words, perhaps avoided By mute consent—but, said or unsaid, felt To point to one so loved and so long lost. And then the hopes rose and shut out the fears— How you would laugh should I recount them now! I still predicted your return at last With gifts beyond the greatest of them all, All Tritheim's wondrous troop; did one of which Attain renown by any chance, I smiled, As well aware of who would prove his peer. Michal was sure some woman, long ere this, As beautiful as you were sage, had loved ... Par. Far-seeing, truly, to discern so much In the fantastic projects and day-dreams Of a raw restless boy! Fest. Oh, no: the sunrise Well warranted our faith in this full noon! Can I forget the anxious voice which said, "Festus, have thoughts like these e'er shaped themselves In other brains than mine? have their possessors Existed in like circumstance? were they weak As I, or ever constant from the first, Despising youth's allurements and rejecting As spider-films the shackles I endure? Is there hope for me?"—and I answered gravely As an acknowledged elder, calmer, wiser, More gifted mortal. O you must remember, For all your glorious ... Par. Glorious? ay, this hair, These hands—nay, touch them, they are mine! Recall With all the said recallings, times when thus To lay them by your own ne'er turned you pale As now. Most glorious, are they not? Fest. Why—why— Something must be subtracted from success So wide, no doubt. He would be scrupulous, truly, Who should object such drawbacks. Still, still, Aureole, You are changed, very changed! 'T were losing nothing To look well to it: you must not be stolen From the enjoyment of your well-won meed. Par. My friend! you seek my pleasure, past a doubt: You will best gain your point, by talking, not Of me, but of yourself. Fest. Have I not said All touching Michal and my children? Sure You know, by this, full well how Aennchen looks Gravely, while one disparts her thick brown hair; And Aureole's glee when some stray gannet builds Amid the birch-trees by the lake. Small hope Have I that he will honor (the wild imp) His namesake. Sigh not! 't is too much to ask That all we love should reach the same proud fate. But you are very kind to humor me By showing interest in my quiet life; You, who of old could never tame yourself To tranquil pleasures, must at heart despise. Par. Festus, strange secrets are let out by death Who blabs so oft the follies of this world: And I am death's familiar, as you know. I helped a man to die, some few weeks since, Warped even from his go-cart to one end— The living on princes' smiles, reflected from A mighty herd of favorites. No mean trick He left untried, and truly well-nigh wormed All traces of God's finger out of him: Then died, grown old. And just an hour before, Having lain long with blank and soulless eyes, He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice Said that in spite of thick air and closed doors God told him it was June; and he knew well, Without such telling, harebells grew in June; And all that kings could ever give or take Would not be precious as those blooms to him. Just so, allowing I am passing sage, It seems to me much worthier argument Why pansies,[2] eyes that laugh, bear beauty's prize From violets, eyes that dream—(your Michal's choice)— Than all fools find to wonder at in me Or in my fortunes. And be very sure I say this from no prurient restlessness, No self-complacency, itching to turn, Vary and view its pleasure from all points, And, in this instance, willing other men May be at pains, demonstrate to itself The realness of the very joy it tastes. What should delight me like the news of friends Whose memories were a solace to me oft, As mountain-baths to wild fowls in their flight? Ofter than you had wasted thought on me Had you been wise, and rightly valued bliss. But there's no taming nor repressing hearts: God knows I need such!—So, you heard me speak? Fest. Speak? when? Par. When but this morning at my class? There was noise and crowd enough. I saw you not. Surely you know I am engaged to fill The chair here?—that 't is part of my proud fate To lecture to as many thick-skulled youths As please, each day, to throng the theatre, To my great reputation, and no small Danger of Basel's benches long unused To crack beneath such honor? Fest. I was there; I mingled with the throng: shall I avow Small care was mine to listen?—too intent On gathering from the murmurs of the crowd A full corroboration of my hopes! What can I learn about your powers? but they Know, care for naught beyond your actual state, Your actual value; yet they worship you, Those various natures whom you sway as one! But ere I go, be sure I shall attend ... Par. Stop, o' God's name: the thing's by no means yet Past remedy! Shall I read this morning's labor —At least in substance? Naught so worth the gaining As an apt scholar! Thus then, with all due Precision and emphasis—you, beside, are clearly Guiltless of understanding more, a whit, The subject than your stool—allowed to be A notable advantage. Fest. Surely, Aureole, You laugh at me! Par. I laugh? Ha, ha! thank heaven, I charge you, if 't be so! for I forget Much, and what laughter should be like. No less, However, I forego that luxury Since it alarms the friend who brings it back. True, laughter like my own must echo strangely To thinking men; a smile were better far; So, make me smile! If the exulting look You wore but now be smiling, 't is so long Since I have smiled! Alas, such smiles are born Alone of hearts like yours, or herdsmen's souls Of ancient time, whose eyes, calm as their flocks, Saw in the stars mere garnishry of heaven, And in the earth a stage for altars only. Never change, Festus: I say, never change! Fest. My God, if he be wretched after all! Par. When last we parted, Festus, you declared, —Or Michal, yes, her soft lips whispered words I have preserved. She told me she believed I should succeed (meaning, that in the search I then engaged in, I should meet success) And yet be wretched: now, she augured false. Fest. Thank heaven! but you spoke strangely: could I venture To think bare apprehension lest your friend, Dazzled by your resplendent course, might find Henceforth less sweetness in his own, could move Such earnest mood in you? Fear not, dear friend, That I shall leave you, inwardly repining Your lot was not my own! Par. And this forever! Forever! gull who may, they will be gulled! They will not look nor think; 't is nothing new In them: but surely he is not of them! My Festus, do you know, I reckoned, you— Though all beside were sand-blind—you, my friend, Would look at me, once close, with piercing eye Untroubled by the false glare that confounds A weaker vision: would remain serene, Though singular amid a gaping throng. I feared you, or I had come, sure, long ere this, To Einsiedeln. Well, error has no end, And Rhasis is a sage, and Basel boasts A tribe of wits, and I am wise and blest Past all dispute! 'T is vain to fret at it. I have vowed long ago my worshippers Shall owe to their own deep sagacity All further information, good or bad. Small risk indeed my reputation runs, Unless perchance the glance now searching me Be fixed much longer; for it seems to spell Dimly the characters a simpler man Might read distinct enough. Old eastern books Say, the fallen prince of morning some short space Remained unchanged in semblance; nay, his brow Was hued with triumph: every spirit then Praising, his heart on flame the while:—a tale! Well, Festus, what discover you, I pray? Fest. Some foul deed sullies then a life which else Were raised supreme? Par. Good: I do well, most well! Why strive to make men hear, feel, fret themselves With what is past their power to comprehend? I should not strive now: only, having nursed The faint surmise that one yet walked the earth, One, at least, not the utter fool of show, Not absolutely formed to be the dupe Of shallow plausibilities alone: One who, in youth, found wise enough to choose The happiness his riper years approve, Was yet so anxious for another's sake, That, ere his friend could rush upon a mad And ruinous course, the converse of his own, His gentle spirit essayed, prejudged for him The perilous path, foresaw its destiny, And warned the weak one in such tender words, Such accents—his whole heart in every tone— That oft their memory comforted that friend When it by right should have increased despair: —Having believed, I say, that this one man Could never lose the light thus from the first His portion—how should I refuse to grieve At even my gain if it disturb our old Relation, if it make me out more wise? Therefore, once more reminding him how well He prophesied, I note the single flaw That spoils his prophet's title. In plain words, You were deceived, and thus were you deceived— I have not been successful, and yet am Most miserable; 't is said at last; nor you Give credit, lest you force me to concede That common sense yet lives upon the world! Fest. You surely do not mean to banter me? Par. You know, or—if you have been wise enough To cleanse your memory of such matters—knew, As far as words of mine could make it clear, That 't was my purpose to find joy or grief Solely in the fulfilment of my plan Or plot or whatsoe'er it was; rejoicing Alone as it proceeded prosperously, Sorrowing then only when mischance retarded Its progress. That was in those Würzburg days! Not to prolong a theme I thoroughly hate, I have pursued this plan with all my strength; And having failed therein most signally, Cannot object to ruin utter and drear As all-excelling would have been the prize Had fortune favored me. I scarce have right To vex your frank good spirit late so glad In my supposed prosperity, I know, And, were I lucky in a glut of friends, Would well agree to let your error live, Nay, strengthen it with fables of success. But mine is no condition to refuse The transient solace of so rare a godsend, My solitary luxury, my one friend: Accordingly I venture to put off The wearisome vest of falsehood galling me, Secure when he is by. I lay me bare, Prone at his mercy—but he is my friend! Not that he needs retain his aspect grave; That answers not my purpose; for 't is like, Some sunny morning—Basel being drained Of its wise population, every corner Of the amphitheatre crammed with learned clerks, Here Œcolampadius, looking worlds of wit, Here Castellanus, as profound as he, Munsterus here, Frobenius there, all squeezed And staring,—that the zany of the show, Even Paracelsus, shall put off before them His trappings with a grace but seldom judged Expedient in such cases:—the grim smile That will go round! Is it not therefore best To venture a rehearsal like the present In a small way? Where are the signs I seek, The first-fruits and fair sample of the scorn Due to all quacks? Why, this will never do! Fest. These are foul vapors, Aureole; naught beside! The effect of watching, study, weariness. Were there a spark of truth in the confusion Of these wild words, you would not outrage thus Your youth's companion. I shall ne'er regard These wanderings, bred of faintness and much study. 'T is not thus you would trust a trouble to me, To Michal's friend. Par. I have said it, dearest Festus! For the manner, 't is ungracious probably; You may have it told in broken sobs, one day, And scalding tears, ere long: but I thought best To keep that off as long as possible. Do you wonder still? Fest. No; it must oft fall out That one whose labor perfects any work, Shall rise from it with eye so worn that he Of all men least can measure the extent Of what he has accomplished. He alone Who, nothing tasked, is nothing weary too, May clearly scan the little he effects: But we, the bystanders, untouched by toil, Estimate each aright. Par. This worthy Festus Is one of them, at last! 'T is so with all! First, they set down all progress as a dream; And next, when he whose quick discomfiture Was counted on, accomplishes some few And doubtful steps in his career,—behold, They look for every inch of ground to vanish Beneath his tread, so sure they spy success! Fest. Few doubtful steps? when death retires before Your presence—when the noblest of mankind, Broken in body or subdued in soul, May through your skill renew their vigor, raise The shattered frame to pristine stateliness? When men in racking pain may purchase dreams Of what delights them most, swooning at once Into a sea of bliss or rapt along As in a flying sphere of turbulent light? When we may look to you as one ordained To free the flesh from fell disease, as frees Our Luther's burning tongue the fettered soul? When ... Par. When and where, the devil, did you get This notable news? Fest. Even from the common voice; From those whose envy, daring not dispute The wonders it decries, attributes them To magic and such folly. Par. Folly? Why not To magic, pray? You find a comfort doubtless In holding, God ne'er troubles him about Us or our doings: once we were judged worth The devil's tempting ... I offend: forgive me, And rest content. Your prophecy on the whole Was fair enough as prophesyings go; At fault a little in detail, but quite Precise enough in the main; and hereupon I pay due homage: you guessed long ago (The prophet!) I should fail—and I have failed. Fest. You mean to tell me, then, the hopes which fed Your youth have not been realized as yet? Some obstacle has barred them hitherto? Or that their innate ... Par. As I said but now, You have a very decent prophet's fame, So you but shun details here. Little matter Whether those hopes were mad,—the aims they sought, Safe and secure from all ambitious fools; Or whether my weak wits are overcome By what a better spirit would scorn: I fail. And now methinks 't were best to change a theme I am a sad fool to have stumbled on. I say confusedly what comes uppermost; But there are times when patience proves at fault, As now: this morning's strange encounter—you Beside me once again! you, whom I guessed Alive, since hitherto (with Luther's leave) No friend have I among the saints at peace, To judge by any good their prayers effect. I knew you would have helped me—why not he, My strange competitor in enterprise, Bound for the same end by another path, Arrived, or ill or well, before the time, At our disastrous journey's doubtful close? How goes it with Aprile? Ah, they miss Your lone sad sunny idleness of heaven, Our martyrs for the world's sake; heaven shuts fast: The poor mad poet is howling by this time! Since you are my sole friend then, here or there, I could not quite repress the varied feelings This meeting wakens; they have had their vent, And now forget them. Do the rear-mice still Hang like a fretwork on the gate (or what In my time was a gate) fronting the road From Einsiedeln to Lachen? Fest. Trifle not: Answer me, for my sake alone! You smiled Just now, when I supposed some deed, unworthy Yourself, might blot the else so bright result; Yet if your motives have continued pure, Your will unfaltering, and in spite of this, You have experienced a defeat, why then I say not you would cheerfully withdraw From contest—mortal hearts are not so fashioned— But surely you would ne'ertheless withdraw. You sought not fame nor gain nor even love, No end distinct from knowledge,—I repeat Your very words: once satisfied that knowledge Is a mere dream, you would announce as much, Yourself the first. But how is the event? You are defeated—and I find you here! Par. As though "here" did not signify defeat! I spoke not of my little labors here, But of the break-down of my general aims: For you, aware of their extent and scope, To look on these sage lecturings, approved By beardless boys, and bearded dotards worse, As a fit consummation of such aims, Is worthy notice. A professorship At Basel! Since you see so much in it, And think my life was reasonably drained Of life's delights to render me a match For duties arduous as such post demands,— Be it far from me to deny my power To fill the petty circle lotted out Of infinite space, or justify the host Of honors thence accruing. So, take notice, This jewel dangling from my neck preserves The features of a prince, my skill restored To plague his people some few years to come: And all through a pure whim. He had eased the earth For me, but that the droll despair which seized The vermin of his household, tickled me. I came to see. Here drivelled the physician, Whose most infallible nostrum was at fault; There quaked the astrologer, whose horoscope Had promised him interminable years; Here a monk fumbled at the sick man's mouth With some undoubted relic—a sudary Of the Virgin; while another piebald knave Of the same brotherhood (he loved them ever) Was actively preparing 'neath his nose Such a suffumigation as, once fired, Had stunk the patient dead ere he could groan. I cursed the doctor and upset the brother, Brushed past the conjurer, vowed that the first gust Of stench from the ingredients just alight Would raise a cross-grained devil in my sword, Not easily laid: and ere an hour the prince Slept as he never slept since prince he was. A day—and I was posting for my life, Placarded through the town as one whose spite Had near availed to stop the blessed effects Of the doctor's nostrum which, well seconded By the sudary, and most by the costly smoke— Not leaving out the strenuous prayers sent up Hard by in the abbey—raised the prince to life: To the great reputation of the seer Who, confident, expected all along The glad event—the doctor's recompense— Much largess from his highness to the monks— And the vast solace of his loving people, Whose general satisfaction to increase, The prince was pleased no longer to defer The burning of some dozen heretics Remanded till God's mercy should be shown Touching his sickness: last of all were joined Ample directions to all loyal folk To swell the complement by seizing me Who—doubtless some rank sorcerer—endeavored To thwart these pious offices, obstruct The prince's cure, and frustrate heaven by help Of certain devils dwelling in his sword. By luck, the prince in his first fit of thanks Had forced this bauble on me as an earnest Of further favors. This one case may serve To give sufficient taste of many such, So, let them pass. Those shelves support a pile Of patents, licenses, diplomas, titles From Germany, France, Spain, and Italy; They authorize some honor; ne'ertheless, I set more store by this Erasmus sent; He trusts me; our Frobenius is his friend, And him "I raised" (nay, read it) "from the dead." I weary you, I see. I merely sought To show, there's no great wonder after all That, while I fill the class-room and attract A crowd to Basel, I get leave to stay, And therefore need not scruple to accept The utmost they can offer, if I please: For 't is but right the world should be prepared To treat with favor e'en fantastic wants Of one like me, used up in serving her. Just as the mortal, whom the gods in part Devoured, received in place of his lost limb Some virtue or other—cured disease, I think; You mind the fables we have read together. Fest. You do not think I comprehend a word. The time was, Aureole, you were apt enough To clothe the airiest thoughts in specious breath; But surely you must feel how vague and strange These speeches sound. Par. Well, then: you know my hopes; I am assured, at length, those hopes were vain; That truth is just as far from me as ever; That I have thrown my life away; that sorrow On that account is idle, and further effort To mend and patch what's marred beyond repairing, As useless: and all this was taught your friend By the convincing good old-fashioned method Of force—by sheer compulsion. Is that plain? Fest. Dear Aureole, can it be my fears were just? God wills not ... Par. Now, 't is this I most admire— The constant talk men of your stamp keep up Of God's will, as they style it; one would swear Man had but merely to uplift his eye, And see the will in question charactered On the heaven's vault. 'T is hardly wise to moot Such topics: doubts are many and faith is weak. I know as much of any will of God As knows some dumb and tortured brute what Man, His stern lord, wills from the perplexing blows That plague him every way; but there, of course, Where least he suffers, longest he remains— My case; and for such reasons I plod on, Subdued but not convinced. I know as little Why I deserve to fail, as why I hoped Better things in my youth. I simply know I am no master here, but trained and beaten Into the path I tread; and here I stay, Until some further intimation reach me, Like an obedient drudge. Though I prefer To view the whole thing as a task imposed Which, whether dull or pleasant, must be done— Yet, I deny not, there is made provision Of joys which tastes less jaded might affect; Nay, some which please me too, for all my pride— Pleasures that once were pains: the iron ring Festering about a slave's neck grows at length Into the flesh it eats. I hate no longer A host of petty vile delights, undreamed of Or spurned before; such now supply the place Of my dead aims: as in the autumn woods Where tall trees used to flourish, from their roots Springs up a fungous brood sickly and pale, Chill mushrooms colored like a corpse's cheek. Fest. If I interpret well your words, I own It troubles me but little that your aims, Vast in their dawning and most likely grown Extravagantly since, have baffled you. Perchance I am glad; you merit greater praise; Because they are too glorious to be gained, Yon do not blindly cling to them and die; You fell, but have not sullenly refused To rise, because an angel worsted you In wrestling, though the world holds not your peer; And though too harsh and sudden is the change To yield content as yet, still you pursue The ungracious path as though 't were rosy-strewn. 'T is well: and your reward, or soon or late, Will come from him whom no man serves in vain. Par. Ah, very fine! For my part, I conceive The very pausing from all further toil, Which you find heinous, would become a seal To the sincerity of all my deeds. To be consistent I should die at once; I calculated on no after-life; Yet (how crept in, how fostered, I know not) Here am I with as passionate regret For youth and health and love so vainly lavished, As if their preservation had been first And foremost in my thoughts; and this strange fact Humbled me wondrously, and had due force In rendering me the less averse to follow A certain counsel, a mysterious warning— You will not understand—but 't was a man With aims not mine and yet pursued like mine, With the same fervor and no more success, Perishing in my sight; who summoned me, As I would shun the ghastly fate I saw, To serve my race at once; to wait no longer That God should interfere in my behalf, But to distrust myself, put pride away, And give my gains, imperfect as they were, To men. I have not leisure to explain How, since, a singular series of events Has raised me to the station you behold, Wherein I seem to turn to most account The mere wreck of the past,—perhaps receive Some feeble glimmering token that God views And may approve my penance: therefore here You find me, doing most good or least harm. And if folks wonder much and profit little 'T is not my fault; only, I shall rejoice When my part in the farce is shuffled through, And the curtain falls: I must hold out till then. Fest. Till when, dear Aureole? Par. Till I'm fairly thrust From my proud eminence. Fortune is fickle And even professors fall: should that arrive, I see no sin in ceding to my bent. You little fancy what rude shocks apprise us We sin; God's intimations rather fail In clearness than in energy: 't were well Did they but indicate the course to take Like that to be forsaken. I would fain Be spared a further sample. Here I stand, And here I stay, be sure, till forced to flit. Fest. Be you but firm on that head! long ere then All I expect will come to pass, I trust: The cloud that wraps you will have disappeared. Meantime, I see small chance of such event: They praise you here as one whose lore, already Divulged, eclipses all the past can show, But whose achievements, marvellous as they be, Are faint anticipations of a glory About to be revealed. When Basel's crowds Dismiss their teacher, I shall be content That he depart. Par. This favor at their hands I look for earlier than your view of things Would warrant. Of the crowd you saw to-day, Remove the full half sheer amazement draws, Mere novelty, naught else; and next, the tribe Whose innate blockish dulness just perceives That unless miracles (as seem my works) Be wrought in their behalf, their chance is slight To puzzle the devil; next, the numerous set Who bitterly hate established schools, and help The teacher that oppugns them, till he once Have planted his own doctrine, when the teacher May reckon on their rancor in his turn; Take, too, the sprinkling of sagacious knaves Whose cunning runs not counter to the vogue, But seeks, by flattery and crafty nursing, To force my system to a premature Short-lived development. Why swell the list? Each has his end to serve, and his best way Of serving it: remove all these, remains A scantling, a poor dozen at the best, Worthy to look for sympathy and service, And likely to draw profit from my pains. Fest. 'T is no encouraging picture: still these few Redeem their fellows. Once the germ implanted, Its growth, if slow, is sure. Par. God grant it so! I would make some amends: but if I fail, The luckless rogues have this excuse to urge, That much is in my method and my manner, My uncouth habits, my impatient spirit, Which hinders of reception and result My doctrine: much to say, small skill to speak! These old aims suffered not a looking-off Though for an instant; therefore, only when I thus renounce them and resolved to reap Some present fruit—to teach mankind some truth So dearly purchased—only then I found Such teaching was an art requiring cares And qualities peculiar to itself: That to possess was one thing—to display Another. With renown first in my thoughts, Or popular praise, I had soon discovered it: One grows but little apt to learn these things. Fest. If it be so, which nowise I believe, There needs no waiting fuller dispensation To leave a labor of so little use. Why not throw up the irksome charge at once? Par. A task, a task! But wherefore hide the whole Extent of degradation once engaged In the confessing vein? Despite of all My fine talk of obedience and repugnance, Docility and what not, 't is yet to learn If when the task shall really be performed, My inclination free to choose once more, I shall do aught but slightly modify The nature of the hated task I quit. In plain words, I am spoiled; my life still tends As first it tended; I am broken and trained To my old habits: they are part of me. I know, and none so well, my darling ends Are proved impossible: no less, no less, Even now what humors me, fond fool, as when Their faint ghosts sit with me and flatter me And send me back content to my dull round? How can I change this soul?—this apparatus Constructed solely for their purposes, So well adapted to their every want, To search out and discover, prove and perfect; This intricate machine whose most minute And meanest motions have their charm to me Though to none else—an aptitude I seize, An object I perceive, a use, a meaning, A property, a fitness, I explain And I alone:—how can I change my soul? And this wronged body, worthless save when tasked Under that soul's dominion—used to care For its bright master's cares and quite subdue Its proper cravings—not to ail nor pine So he but prosper—whither drag this poor Tried patient body? God! how I essayed To live like that mad poet, for a while, To love alone; and how I felt too warped And twisted and deformed! What should I do, Even though released from drudgery, but return Faint, as you see, and halting, blind and sore, To my old life and die as I began? I cannot feed on beauty for the sake Of beauty only, nor can drink in balm From lovely objects for their loveliness; My nature cannot lose her first imprint; I still must hoard and heap and class all truths With one ulterior purpose: I must know! Would God translate me to his throne, believe That I should only listen to his word To further my own aim! For other men, Beauty is prodigally strewn around, And I were happy could I quench as they This mad and thriveless longing, and content me With beauty for itself alone: alas, I have addressed a frock of heavy mail Yet may not join the troop of sacred knights; And now the forest-creatures fly from me, The grass-banks cool, the sunbeams warm no more. Best follow, dreaming that ere night arrive, I shall o'ertake the company and ride Glittering as they! Fest. I think I apprehend What you would say: if you, in truth, design To enter once more on the life thus left, Seek not to hide that all this consciousness Of failure is assumed! Par. My friend, my friend, I toil, you listen; I explain, perhaps You understand: there our communion ends. Have you learnt nothing from to-day's discourse? When we would thoroughly know the sick man's state We feel awhile the fluttering pulse, press soft The hot brow, look upon the languid eye, And thence divine the rest. Must I lay bare My heart, hideous and beating, or tear up My vitals for your gaze, ere you will deem Enough made known? You! who are you, forsooth? That is the crowning operation claimed By the arch-demonstrator—heaven the hall, And earth the audience. Let Aprile and you Secure good places: 't will be worth the while. Fest. Are you mad, Aureole? What can I have said To call for this? I judged from your own words. Par. Oh, doubtless! A sick wretch describes the ape That mocks him from the bed-foot, and all gravely You thither turn at once: or he recounts The perilous journey he has late performed, And you are puzzled much how that could be! You find me here, half stupid and half mad; It makes no part of my delight to search Into these matters, much less undergo Another's scrutiny; but so it chances That I am led to trust my state to you: And the event is, you combine, contrast And ponder on my foolish words as though They thoroughly conveyed all hidden here— Here, loathsome with despair and hate and rage! Is there no fear, no shrinking and no shame? Will you guess nothing? will you spare me nothing? Must I go deeper? Ay or no? Fest. Dear friend ... Par. True: I am brutal—'t is a part of it; The plague's sign—you are not a lazar-haunter, How should you know? Well then, you think it strange I should profess to have failed utterly, And yet propose an ultimate return To courses void of hope: and this, because You know not what temptation is, nor how 'T is like to ply men in the sickliest part. You are to understand that we who make Sport for the gods, are hunted to the end: There is not one sharp volley shot at us, Which 'scaped with life, though hurt, we slacken pace And gather by the wayside herbs and roots To stanch our wounds, secure from further harm: We are assailed to life's extremest verge. It will be well indeed if I return, A harmless busy fool, to my old ways! I would forget hints of another fate, Significant enough, which silent hours Have lately scared me with. Fest. Another! and what? Par. After all, Festus, you say well: I am A man yet: I need never humble me. I would have been—something, I know not what; But though I cannot soar, I do not crawl. There are worse portions than this one of mine. You say well! Fest. Ah! Par. And deeper degradation! If the mean stimulants of vulgar praise, If vanity should become the chosen food Of a sunk mind, should stifle even the wish To find its early aspirations true, Should teach it to breathe falsehood like life-breath— An atmosphere of craft and trick and lies; Should make it proud to emulate, surpass Base natures in the practices which woke Its most indignant loathing once ... No, no! Utter damnation is reserved for hell! I had immortal feelings; such shall never Be wholly quenched: no, no! My friend, you wear A melancholy face, and certain 't is There 's little cheer in all this dismal work. But was it my desire to set abroach Such memories and forebodings? I foresaw Where they would drive. 'T were better we discuss News from Lucerne or Zurich; ask and tell Of Egypt's flaring sky or Spain's cork-groves. Fest. I have thought: trust me, this mood will pass away! I know you and the lofty spirit you bear, And easily ravel out a clue to all. These are the trials meet for such as you, Nor must you hope exemption: to be mortal Is to be plied with trials manifold. Look round! The obstacles which kept the rest From your ambition, have been spurned by you; Their fears, their doubts, the chains that bind them all, Were flax before your resolute soul, which naught Avails to awe save these delusions bred From its own strength, its selfsame strength disguised, Mocking itself. Be brave, dear Aureole! Since The rabbit has his shade to frighten him, The fawn a rustling bough, mortals their cares, And higher natures yet would slight and laugh At these entangling fantasies, as you At trammels of a weaker intellect,— Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts! I know you. Par. And I know you, dearest Festus! And how you love unworthily; and how All admiration renders blind. Fest. You hold That admiration blinds? Par. Ay and alas! Fest. Naught blinds you less than admiration, friend! Whether it be that all love renders wise In its degree; from love which blends with love— Heart answering heart—to love which spends itself In silent mad idolatry of some Pre-eminent mortal, some great soul of souls, Which ne'er will know how well it is adored. I say, such love is never blind; but rather Alive to every the minutest spot Which mars its object, and which hate (supposed So vigilant and searching) dreams not of. Love broods on such: what then? When first perceived Is there no sweet strife to forget, to change, To overflush those blemishes with all The glow of general goodness they disturb? —To make those very defects an endless source Of new affection grown from hopes and fears? And, when all fails, is there no gallant stand Made even for much proved weak? no shrinking-back Lest, since all love assimilates the soul To what it loves, it should at length become Almost a rival of its idol? Trust me, If there be fiends who seek to work our hurt, To ruin and drag down earth's mightiest spirits Even at God's foot, 't will be from such as love, Their zeal will gather most to serve their cause; And least from those who hate, who most essay By contumely and scorn to blot the light Which forces entrance even to their hearts: For thence will our defender tear the veil And show within each heart, as in a shrine, The giant image of perfection, grown In hate's despite, whose calumnies were spawned In the untroubled presence of its eyes. True admiration blinds not; nor am I So blind. I call your sin exceptional; It springs from one whose life has passed the bounds Prescribed to life. Compound that fault with God! I speak of men; to common men like me The weakness you reveal endears you more, Like the far traces of decay in suns. I bid you have good cheer! Par. Præclare! Optime! Think of a quiet mountain-cloistered priest Instructing Paracelsus! yet 't is so. Come, I will show you where my merit lies. 'T is in the advance of individual minds That the slow crowd should ground their expectation Eventually to follow; as the sea Waits ages in its bed till some one wave Out of the multitudinous mass, extends The empire of the whole, some feet perhaps, Over the strip of sand which could confine Its fellows so long time: thenceforth the rest, Even to the meanest, hurry in at once, And so much is clear gained. I shall be glad If all my labors, failing of aught else, Suffice to make such inroad and procure A wider range for thought: nay, they do this; For, whatsoe'er my notions of true knowledge And a legitimate success, may be, I am not blind to my undoubted rank When classed with others: I precede my age: And whoso wills is very free to mount These labors as a platform whence his own May have a prosperous outset. But, alas! My followers—they are noisy as you heard; But, for intelligence, the best of them So clumsily wield the weapons I supply And they extol, that I begin to doubt Whether their own rude clubs and pebble-stones Would not do better service than my arms Thus vilely swayed—if error will not fall Sooner before the old awkward batterings Than my more subtle warfare, not half learned. Fest. I would supply that art, then, or withhold New arms until you teach their mystery. Par. Content you, 't is my wish; I have recourse To the simplest training. Day by day I seek To wake the mood, the spirit which alone Can make those arms of any use to men. Of course they are for swaggering forth at once Graced with Ulysses' bow, Achilles' shield— Flash on us, all in armor, thou Achilles! Make our hearts dance to thy resounding step! A proper sight to scare the crows away! Fest. Pity you choose not then some other method Of coming at your point. The marvellous art At length established in the world bids fair To remedy all hindrances like these: Trust to Frobenius' press the precious lore Obscured by uncouth manner, or unfit For raw beginners; let his types secure A deathless monument to after-time; Meanwhile wait confidently and enjoy The ultimate effect: sooner or later You shall be all-revealed. Par. The old dull question In a new form; no more. Thus: I possess Two sorts of knowledge; one,—vast, shadowy, Hints of the unbounded aim I once pursued: The other consists of many secrets, caught While bent on nobler prize,—perhaps a few Prime principles which may conduct to much: These last I offer to my followers here. Now, bid me chronicle the first of these, My ancient study, and in effect you bid Revert to the wild courses just abjured: I must go find them scattered through the world. Then, for the principles, they are so simple (Being chiefly of the overturning sort), That one time is as proper to propound them As any other—to-morrow at my class, Or half a century hence embalmed in print. For if mankind intend to learn at all, They must begin by giving faith to them And acting on them: and I do not see But that my lectures serve indifferent well: No doubt these dogmas fall not to the earth, For all their novelty and rugged setting. I think my class will not forget the day I let them know the gods of Israel, Aëtius, Oribasius, Galen, Rhasis, Serapion, Avicenna, Averröes, Were blocks! Fest. And that reminds me, I heard something About your waywardness: you burned their books. It seems, instead of answering those sages. Par. And who said that? Fest. Some I met yesternight With Œcolampadius. As you know, the purpose Of this short stay at Basel was to learn His pleasure touching certain missives sent For our Zuinglius and himself. 'T was he Apprised me that the famous teacher here Was my old friend. Par. Ah, I forgot: you went ... Fest. From Zurich with advices for the ear Of Luther, now at Wittenberg—(you know, I make no doubt, the differences of late With Carolostadius)—and returning sought Basel and ... Par. I remember. Here 's a case, now, Will teach you why I answer not, but burn The books you mention. Pray, does Luther dream His arguments convince by their own force The crowds that own his doctrine? No, indeed! His plain denial of established points Ages had sanctified and men supposed Could never be oppugned while earth was under And heaven above them—points which chance or time Affected not—did more than the array Of argument which followed. Boldly deny! There is much breath-stopping, hair-stiffening Awhile; then, amazed glances, mute awaiting The thunderbolt which does not come: and next, Reproachful wonder and inquiry; those Who else had never stirred, are able now To find the rest out for themselves, perhaps To outstrip him who set the whole at work, —As never will my wise class its instructor. And you saw Luther? Fest. 'T is a wondrous soul! Par. True: the so-heavy chain which galled mankind Is shattered, and the noblest of us all Must bow to the deliverer—nay, the worker Of our own project—we who long before Had burst our trammels, but forgot the crowd, We should have taught, still groaned beneath their load: This he has done and nobly. Speed that may! Whatever be my chance or my mischance, What benefits mankind must glad me too; And men seem made, though not as I believed, For something better than the times produce. Witness these gangs of peasants your new lights From Suabia have possessed, whom Münzer leads, And whom the duke, the landgrave and the elector Will calm in blood! Well, well; 't is not my world! Fest. Hark! Par. 'T is the melancholy wind astir Within the trees; the embers too are gray: Morn must be near. Fest. Best ope the casement: see, The night, late strewn with clouds and flying stars, Is blank and motionless: how peaceful sleep The tree-tops altogether! Like an asp, The wind slips whispering from bough to bough. Par. Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken tree By the hour, nor count time lost. Fest. So you shall gaze: Those happy times will come again. Par. Gone, gone, Those pleasant times! Does not the moaning wind Seem to bewail that we have gained such gains And bartered sleep for them? Fest. It is our trust That there is yet another world to mend All error and mischance. Par. Another world! And why this world, this common world, to be A make-shift, a mere foil, how fair soever, To some fine life to come? Man must be fed With angels' food, forsooth; and some few traces Of a diviner nature which look out Through his corporeal baseness, warrant him In a supreme contempt of all provision For his inferior tastes—some straggling marks Which constitute his essence, just as truly As here and there a gem would constitute The rock, their barren bed, one diamond. But were it so—were man all mind—he gains A station little enviable. From God Down to the lowest spirit ministrant, Intelligence exists which casts our mind Into immeasurable shade. No, no: Love, hope, fear, faith—these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character, And these I have lost!—gone, shut from me forever, Like a dead friend safe from unkindness more! See, morn at length. The heavy darkness seems Diluted, gray and clear without the stars; The shrubs bestir and rouse themselves as if Some snake, that weighed them down all night, let go His hold; and from the East, fuller and fuller Day, like a mighty river, flowing in; But clouded, wintry, desolate and cold. Yet see how that broad prickly star-shaped plant, Half-down in the crevice, spreads its woolly leaves All thick and glistering with diamond dew. And you depart for Einsiedeln this day, And we have spent all night in talk like this! If you would have me better for your love, Revert no more to these sad themes. Fest. One favor, And I have done. I leave you, deeply moved; Unwilling to have fared so well, the while My friend has changed so sorely. If this mood Shall pass away, if light once more arise Where all is darkness now, if you see fit To hope and trust again, and strive again, You will remember—not our love alone— But that my faith in God's desire that man Should trust on his support, (as I must think You trusted) is obscured and dim through you: For you are thus, and this is no reward. Will you not call me to your side, dear Aureole?