"Gute Nacht! Schlafen sie wohl!"
A light laugh, and the window closed, "Good-night! Sleep well!" Love's best wish!--and for some sad souls life's last hope,--a "good-night and sleep well!" Poor tired World, for whose weary inhabitants oftentimes the greatest blessing is sleep! Good-night! sleep well! but the sleep implies waking.--waking to a morning of pleasure or sorrow,--or labor that is only lightened by,--Love! Love!--love divine,--love human,--and, sweetest love of all for us, as Christ has taught when both divine and human are mingled in one!
Alwyn, glancing up at the clustering stars, hanging like pendent fire-jewels above him, thought of this marvel-glory of Love,--this celestial visitant who, on noiseless pinions, comes flying divinely into the poorest homes, transfiguring common life with ethereal radiance, making toil easy, giving beauty to the plainest faces and poetry to the dullest brains. Love! its tremulous hand- clasp,--its rapturous kiss,--the speechless eloquence it gives to gentle eyes!--the grace it bestows on even the smallest gift from lover to beloved, were such gift but a handful of meadow blossoms tied with some silken threads of hair!
Not for the poet creator of "Nourhulma" such love any more,--had he not drained the cup of Passion to the dregs in the far Past, and tasted its mixed sweetness and bitterness to no purpose save self-indulgence? All that was over;--and yet, as he walked away from the bridge, back to his hotel in the quiet moonlight, he thought what a transcendent thing Love might be, even on earth, between two whose spirits were SPIRITUALLY AKIN,--whose lives were like two notes played in tuneful concord,--whose hearts beat echoing faith and tenderness to one another,--and who held their love as a sacred bond of union--a gift from God, not to be despoiled by that rough familiarity which surely brings contempt. And then before his fancy appeared to float the radiant visage of Edris, half-child, half-angel,--he seemed to see her beautiful eyes, so pure, so clear, so unshadowed by any knowledge of sin,-- and the exquisite lines of a poet-contemporary, whose work he specially admired, occurred to him with singular suggestiveness: "Oh, thou'lt confess that love from man to maid Is more than kingdoms,--more than light and shade In sky-built gardens where the minstrels dwell, And more than ransom from the bonds of Hell. Thou wilt, I say, admit the truth of this, And half relent that, shrinking from a kiss, Thou didst consign me to mine own disdain, Athwart the raptures of a vision'd bliss.
"I'll seek no joy that is not linked with thine, No touch of hope, no taste of holy wine, And after death, no home in any star, That is not shared by thee, supreme, afar As here thou'rt first and foremost of all things! Glory is thine, and gladness, and the wings That wait on thought, when, in thy spirit-sway, Thou dost invest a realm unknown to kings!"