Part 25 (2/2)
KLOPSTOCK AND META.[36]
The poet had retired from the social circle. Its mirth was to his sickened soul a noisy discord, its sentiment a hollow mockery. With grief he felt that the recital of a generous action, the vivid expression of a n.o.ble thought, could only graze the surface of his mind.
The desolate stillness of death lay brooding on its depths. The friendly smiles, the tender attentions which seemed so sweet in those hours when Meta was ”crown of his cup and garnish of his dish,” could give the present but a ghastly similitude to those blessed days. While his attention, disobedient to his wishes, kept turning painfully inward, the voice of the singer suddenly startled it back. A lovely maid, with moist, clear eye, and pleadi ng, earnest voice, was seated at the harpsichord. She sang a sad, and yet not hopeless, strain, like that of a lover who pines in absence, yet hopes again to meet his loved one.
The heart of Klopstock rose to his lips, and natural tears suffused his eyes. She paused. Some youth of untouched heart, shallow, as yet, in all things, asked for a lively song, the expression of animal enjoyment. She hesitated, and cast a sidelong glance at the mourner. Heedlessly the request was urged: she wafted over the keys an airy prelude. A cold rush of anguish came over the awakened heart; Klopstock rose, and hastily left the room.
He entered his apartment, and threw himself upon the bed. The moon was nearly at the full: a tree near the large window obscured its radiance, and cast into the room a flickering shadow, as its leaves kept swaying to and fro with the breeze.
Vainly Klopstock sought for soothing influences in the contemplation of the soft and varying light. Sadness is always deepest at this hour of celestial calmness. The soul realizes its wants, and longs to be in harmony with itself far more in such an hour than when any outward ill is arousing or oppressing it.
”Weak, fond wretch that I am!” cried he. ”I, the bard of the Messiah! To what purpose have I nurtured my soul on the virtues of that sublime model, for whom no renunciation was too hard? Four years an angel sojourned with me: her presence vivified my soul into purity and benevolence like her own. Happy was I as the saints who rest after their long struggles in the bosom of perfect love. I thought myself good because I sinned not against a bounteous G.o.d, because my heart could spare some drops of its overflowing oil and balm for the wounds of others: now what am I? My angel leaves me, but she leaves with me the memory of blissful years and our perfect communion as an earnest of that happy meeting which awaits us, if I prove faithful to my own words of faith, to those strains of religious confidence which are even now cheering onward many an inexperienced youth. And what are my deeds and feelings? The springs of life and love frozen, here I lie, sunk in grief, as if I knew no world beyond the grave. The joy of others seems an insult, their grief a dead letter, compared with my own. Meta! Meta!
couldst thou see me in my hour of trial, thou wouldst disdain thy chosen one!”
A strain of sweet and solemn music swelled on his ear--one of those majestic harmonies which, were there no other proof of the soul's immortality, must suggest the image of an intellectual paradise. It closed, and Meta stood before him. A long veil of silvery whiteness fell over her, through which might be seen the fixed but n.o.bly-serene expression of the large blue eyes, and a holy, seraphic dignity of mien.
Klopstock knelt before her: his soul was awed to earth. ”Hast thou come, my adored!” said he, ”from thy home of bliss, to tell me that thou no longer lovest thy unworthy friend?”
”O, speak not thus!” replied the softest and most penetrating of voices.
”G.o.d wills not that his purified creatures should look in contempt or anger on those suffering the ills from which they are set free. O, no, my love! my husband! I come to speak consolation to thy sinking spirit.
When you left me to breathe my last sigh in the arms of a sister, who, however dear, was nothing to my heart in comparison with you, I closed my eyes, wis.h.i.+ng that the light of day might depart with thee. The thought of what thou must suffer convulsed my heart with one last pang.
Once more I murmured the wish I had so often expressed, that the sorrows of the survivor might have fallen to my lot rather than to thine. In that pang my soul extricated itself from the body; a sensation like that from exquisite fragrance came over me, and with breezy lightness I rose into the pure serene. It was a moment of feeling almost wild,--so free, so un.o.bscured. I had not yet pa.s.sed the verge of comparison; I could not yet embrace the Infinite: therefore my joy was like those of earth--intoxicating.
”Words cannot paint, even to thy eager soul, my friend, the winged swiftness, the onward, glowing hopefulness of my path through the fields of azure. I paused, at length, in a region of keen, pure, bluish light, such as beams from Jupiter to thy planet on a lovely October evening.
”Here an immediate conviction pervaded me that this was home--was my appointed resting place; a full tide of hope and satisfaction similar to the emotion excited on my first acquaintance with thy poem flowed over this hour; a joyous confidence in the existence of Goodness and Beauty supplied for a season, the want of thy society. The delicious clearness of every emotion exalted my soul into a realm full of life. Some time elapsed in this state. The whole of my temporal existence pa.s.sed in review before me. My thoughts, my actions, were placed in full relief before the cleared eye of my spirit. Beloved, thou wilt rejoice to know that thy Meta could then feel that her worst faults sprung from ignorance. As I was striving to connect my present state with my past, and, as it were, poising myself on the brink of s.p.a.ce and time, the breath of another presence came across me, and, gradually evolving from the bosom of light, a figure rose before me, in grace, in sweetness, how excelling! Fixing her eyes on mine with the full gaze of love, she said, in flute-like tones, 'Dost thou know me, my sister?'
”'Art thou not,' I replied, 'the love of Petrarch? I have seen the portraiture of thy mortal lineaments, and now recognize that perfect beauty, the full violet flower which thy lover's genius was able to antic.i.p.ate.'
”'Yes,' she said, 'I am Laura--on earth most happy, yet most sad; most rich, and yet most poor. I come to greet her whom I recognize as the inheritress of all that was lovely in my earthly being, more happy than I in her temporal state. I have sympathized, O wife of Klopstock! in thy transitory happiness. Thy lover was thy priest and thy poet; thy model and oracle was thy bosom friend. All that earth could give was thine; and I joyed to think on thy rewarded love, thy freedom of soul, and unchecked faith. Follow me now: we are to dwell in the same circle, and I am appointed to show thee thine abiding place.'
”She guided me towards the source of that light which I have described to thee. We paused before a structure of dazzling whiteness, which stood on a slope, and overlooked a valley of exceeding beauty. It was shaded by trees which had that peculiar calmness that the shadows of trees have below in the high noon of summer moonlight--
'... trees which are still As the shades of trees below, When they sleep on the lonely hill, In the summer moonlight glow.'
It was decked with majestic sculptures, of which I may speak in some future interview. Before it rose a fountain, from which the stream of light flowed down the valley, dividing it into two unequal parts. The larger and farther from us seemed, when I first looked on it, populous with shapes, beauteous as that of my guide. But, when I looked more fixedly, I saw only the valley, carpeted with large blue and white flowers, which emitted a hyacinthine odor. Here, Laura, turning round, asked, 'Is not this a poetic home, Meta?'
”I paused a moment ere I replied, 'It is indeed a place of beauty, but more like the Greek elysium than the home Klopstock and I were wont to picture to ourselves beyond the gates of Death.'
”'Thou sayest well,' she said; 'nor is this thy final home; thou wilt but wait here a season, till Klopstock comes.'
”'What' said I, 'alone! alone in Eden?'
”'Has not Meta, then, collected aught on which she might meditate? Hast thou never read, ”While I was musing, the fire burned”?'
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