"In the realm to death made blest,
Lethe's waters round them closing,
These two lovers sat reposing,
As for everlasting rest.
All is silent as can be,
And the vaulted skies up yonder
Swarm with many a starry wonder,
While the moon sinks in the sea."
In this dreamy attitude, at the feet of the goddess of death, let us
leave the noble poet.
There he sits, while his most beautiful poetic visions glide in
nebulous form before his eyes. He sees the River Styx. Venus, Urania,
and Endymion sail in a boat down the stream, while the crown which
Venus wears casts a brilliant starry sheen over the gloomy waves
and shores. He sees Amor and Psyche blissfully floating by in lofty
Kassiopeia and proud Orion; he descries Adam and Alma gliding past,
all closely wrapped in the purifying flames of purgatory; he beholds
Alexander kneeling before Kalanus, and the slender, refined form of the
Indian, with the white bandage about his brow, and singing his swan's
song, ascend from the funeral pyre through the smoke and the black
clouds to Brahma.
"At the feet of her, his goddess,
Happy now he sits and dreams;
All aglow death's kingdom seems,"
while his works survive him and render his name immortal.
There was always a great deal of sky in his paintings, but his name
will be most enduringly united with that part of his pictures which
portrays earth and the earthly.
[1] Now the Empress of Russia.
[Illustration: BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON.]