"I saw a ship sailing upon the sea
Deeply laden as ship could be;
But not so deep as in love I am
For I care not whether I sink or swim."
Old Ballad.
"But Love is such a Mystery
I cannot find it out:
For when I think I'm best resols'd,
I then am in most doubt."
SIR JOHN SUCKLING.
One story I will try to reproduce. But, alas! it is like trying to
reconstruct a forest out of broken branches and withered leaves. In the
fairy book, everything was just as it should be, though whether in words
or something else, I cannot tell. It glowed and flashed the thoughts
upon the soul, with such a power that the medium disappeared from the
consciousness, and it was occupied only with the things themselves.
My representation of it must resemble a translation from a rich and
powerful language, capable of embodying the thoughts of a splendidly
developed people, into the meagre and half-articulate speech of a savage
tribe. Of course, while I read it, I was Cosmo, and his history
was mine. Yet, all the time, I seemed to have a kind of double
consciousness, and the story a double meaning. Sometimes it seemed
only to represent a simple story of ordinary life, perhaps almost of
universal life; wherein two souls, loving each other and longing to come
nearer, do, after all, but behold each other as in a glass darkly.
As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the
solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the
lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through
the earth's atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men, and
sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and
effect, when between the two no connecting links can be traced.
Cosmo von Wehrstahl was a student at the University of Prague. Though
of a noble family, he was poor, and prided himself upon the independence
that poverty gives; for what will not a man pride himself upon, when he
cannot get rid of it? A favourite with his fellow students, he yet had
no companions; and none of them had ever crossed the threshold of his
lodging in the top of one of the highest houses in the old town. Indeed,
the secret of much of that complaisance which recommended him to his
fellows, was the thought of his unknown retreat, whither in the evening
he could betake himself and indulge undisturbed in his own studies and
reveries. These studies, besides those subjects necessary to his course
at the University, embraced some less commonly known and approved;
for in a secret drawer lay the works of Albertus Magnus and Cornelius
Agrippa, along with others less read and more abstruse. As yet, however,
he had followed these researches only from curiosity, and had turned
them to no practical purpose.