Hyperion (Longfellow)/Chapter 1
HYPERION
A ROMANCE
"Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart."
BOOK THE FIRST
CHAPTER I.
The Hero
In John Lyly's "Endymion," Sir Topas is made to say: "Dost thou know what a poet is? Why, fool, a poet is as much as one should say,—a poet!" And thou, reader, dost thou know what a hero is? Why, a hero is as much as one should say,—a hero! Some romance-writers, however, say much more than this. Nay, the old Lombard, Matteo Maria Bojardo, set all the church-bells in Scandiano ringing, merely because he had found a name for one of his heroes. Here, also, shall church-bells be rung, but more solemnly.
The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone. Shadows of evening fall around us, and the world seems but a dim reflection,—itself a broader shadow. We look forward into the coming lonely night. The soul withdraws into itself. Then stars arise, and the night is holy.
Paul Flemming had experienced this, though still young. The friend of his youth was dead. The bough had broken “under the burden of the unripe fruit.” And when, after a season, he looked up again from the blindness of his sorrow, all things seemed unreal. Like the man whose sight had been restored by miracle, he beheld men, as trees, walking. His household gods were broken. He had no home. His sympathies cried aloud from his desolate soul, and there came no answer from the busy, turbulent world around him. He did not willingly give way to grief He struggled to be cheerful,—to be strong. But he could no longer look into the familiar faces of his friends. He could no longer live alone, where he had lived with her. He went abroad, that the sea might be between him and the grave. Alas! between him and his sorrow there could be no sea, but that of time.
He had already passed many months in lonely wandering, and was now pursuing his way along the Rhine, to the South of Germany. He had journeyed the same way before, in brighter days and a brighter season of the year, in the May of life and in the month of May. He knew the beautiful river all by heart,—every rock and ruin, every echo, every legend. The ancient castles, grim and hoar, that had taken root as it were on the cliffs,—they were all his; for his thoughts dwelt in them, and the wind told him tales.
He had passed a sleepless night at Rolandseck, and had risen before daybreak. He opened the window of the balcony to hear the rushing of the Rhine. It was a damp December morning; and clouds were passing over the sky,—thin, vapory clouds, whose snow-white skirts were often spotted with golden tears, which men call stars.” The day dawned slowly; and, in the mingling of daylight and starlight, the island and cloister of Nonnenwerth made together but one broad, dark shadow on the silver breast of the river. Beyond, rose the summits of the Siebengebirg. Solemn and dark, like a monk, stood the Drachenfels, in his hood of mist; and rearward extended the curtain of mountains, back to the Wolkenburg,—the Castle of Clouds.
But Flemming thought not of the scene before him. Sorrow unspeakable was upon his spirit in that lonely hour; and, hiding his face in his hands, he exclaimed aloud:—
“Spirit of the past! look not so mournfully at me with thy great tearful eyes! Touch me not with thy cold hand! Breathe not upon me with the icy breath of the grave! Chant no more that dirge of sorrow, through the long and silent watches of the night!”
Mournful voices from afar seemed to answer, “Treuenfels!” and he remembered how others had suffered, and his heart grew still.
Slowly the landscape brightened. Down the rushing, stream came a boat, with its white wings spread, and darted like a swallow through the narrow pass of God’s-Help. The boatmen were singing,—but not the song of Roland the Brave, which was heard of old by the weeping Hildegund, as she sat within the walls of that cloister which now looked forth in the pale morning from amid the leafless linden-trees. The dim traditions of those gray old times rose in the traveller’s memory; for the ruined tower of Rolandseck was still looking down upon the Kloster Nonnenwerth, as if the sound of the funeral bell had changed the faithful paladin to stone and he were watching still to see the form of his beloved one come forth, not from her cloister, but from her grave. Thus the brazen clasps of the book of legends were opened, and, on the page illuminated by the misty rays of the rising sun, he read again the tales of Liba, and the mournful bride of Argenfels, and Siegfried, the mighty slayer of the dragon. Meanwhile the mists had risen from the Rhine, and the whole air was filled with golden vapor, through which he beheld the sun, hanging in heaven like a drop of blood. Even thus shone the sun within him, amid the wintry . vapors uprising from the valley of the shadow of death, through which flowed the stream of his life,—sighing, sighing!