Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child,
with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the tube through
which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds the same thing
everywhere; the other that through which he looks when he combines into
new forms of loveliness those images of beauty which his own choice has
gathered from all regions wherein he has travelled. Round the child's
head was an aureole of emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and
delight, round crept from behind me the something dark, and the child
stood in my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough
broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from behind.
The toys he carried were a multiplying-glass and a kaleidoscope. I
sighed and departed.
One evening, as a great silent flood of western gold flowed through an
avenue in the woods, down the stream, just as when I saw him first, came
the sad knight, riding on his chestnut steed.
But his armour did not shine half so red as when I saw him first.
Many a blow of mighty sword and axe, turned aside by the strength of
his mail, and glancing adown the surface, had swept from its path the
fretted rust, and the glorious steel had answered the kindly blow with
the thanks of returning light. These streaks and spots made his armour
look like the floor of a forest in the sunlight. His forehead was higher
than before, for the contracting wrinkles were nearly gone; and the
sadness that remained on his face was the sadness of a dewy summer
twilight, not that of a frosty autumn morn. He, too, had met the
Alder-maiden as I, but he had plunged into the torrent of mighty deeds,
and the stain was nearly washed away. No shadow followed him. He had
not entered the dark house; he had not had time to open the closet door.
"Will he ever look in?" I said to myself. "MUST his shadow find him some
day?" But I could not answer my own questions.
We travelled together for two days, and I began to love him. It was
plain that he suspected my story in some degree; and I saw him once or
twice looking curiously and anxiously at my attendant gloom, which all
this time had remained very obsequiously behind me; but I offered no
explanation, and he asked none. Shame at my neglect of his warning, and
a horror which shrunk from even alluding to its cause, kept me silent;
till, on the evening of the second day, some noble words from my
companion roused all my heart; and I was at the point of falling on
his neck, and telling him the whole story; seeking, if not for
helpful advice, for of that I was hopeless, yet for the comfort of
sympathy--when round slid the shadow and inwrapt my friend; and I could
not trust him.