He describes his journey to his beloved.
"In the Hermit's Hut on Vesuvius.
"Why does not man fall on his knees and adore the world, the mountains,
the sea, the all? How it exalts the spirit to think that it is, and
that it is conscious of the immense world and of itself! O Linda, I am
still full of the morning; I still sojourn even on the sublime hell.
Yesterday I rode in the morning with my _Bartolomeo_ through the rich,
full garden avenue to the gay Portici, which links itself to the giant
like Catana to Ætna. Ever the same great epic Greek feature running
through this sublime land,--the same blending of the monstrous
with the beautiful, of nature with men, of eternity with the
moment; country-houses and a laughing plain opposite to the eternal
death-torch; between old, holy temple-columns goes a merry dance, the
common monk and the fisherman; the glowing blocks of the mountain tower
up as a bulwark around vineyards, and beneath the living Portici dwells
the hollow, dead Herculaneum; lava cliffs have grown out into the sea,
and dark battering-rams lie cast among the flowers. The ascent was in
the beginning refreshment to my soul; the long mountain was a conductor
to the full cloud. Late at night, after an eternal ascent, without
having enjoyed the evening sun, through whose red glow upon the ashes
we were obliged to wade rapidly, we arrived here at the hermit's. The
moon was not yet up; thy island was still invisible. Often it thundered
under the floor of the apartment. Then was I all at once pleasantly
reminded by the hermit of my old Schoppe, when he told me that a
limping traveller with a wolf-dog had once said up here, 'In Vesuvius
was the stall of the incessantly stamping thunder-steeds.' That could
certainly after all have been no one but Schoppe.
"At midnight, my Linda, when the moon stood high over the Apennine, and
looked from heaven with a long, enraptured, silvery look, and I thought
of thee, I arose and went softly out, in order to see again where thou
dwellest, my Linda. Out of doors it was all still everywhere; I seemed
to hear the earth thunder along its path in the heavens; the shadows of
the linden-trees around me lay fast asleep on the green turf; the smoke
of Vesuvius streamed up into the pure air; the moon gleamed out
wondrously over the smoking sea, and with difficulty I sought and
found at last the solitary mountain of thy island soaring into the
blue, blooming silvery among the surrounding stars,--a glimmering
temple-pinnacle for my heart. 'Yonder she dwells, and slumbers upon
her Tabor, a glorified one of Elysium!' I said to myself. Around me
was the ashes of centuries, stillness as of a coffin, and only now and
then a rattling, as if they were throwing upon it the earth of the
grave-mound. I was neither in the land of death nor of immortality; the
countries became clouds; Naples and Portici lay hidden; the broad
blue of heaven encompassed me; a high night-wind bent the smoke-column
of Vesuvius downward, and swept it on in long clouds, tinged with
ever-varying hues, through the pure ether. Then I looked after Ischia,
and looked toward heaven. O Linda, I am sincere, hear it; I prayed the
holy Liana, who loved thee so infinitely, now to hover round thee and
prepare for thee the fortune which she once so earnestly wished thee.
All at once the thunders of the mountain became entirely still, the
stars sparkled more brightly. Then did the silence and life send a
shudder through me, and I went back into the hut; but long did I
continue to weep for rapture at the mere thought that thou wast happy.
"The morning rose, and in the midst of its wintry darkness we entered
upon our journey to the fire-flue and smoke-gate. As in a burnt-up,
smoking city, I went along by hollows, around hollows, mountains around
mountains, and over the trembling floor of an everlastingly active
powder-mill up to the powder-house. At last I found the throat of this
land of fire,--a great glowing smoke-valley, containing another
mountain within it,--a landscape of craters, a workshop of the last
day, full of fragments of worlds, of frozen, burst hell-floods,--an
enormous potsherd of time, but inexhaustible, immortal as an evil
spirit, and under the cold, pure heaven bringing forth to itself twelve
thunder-months.
"All at once the broad smoke ascends more darkly red, the thunders roll
more wildly into one another, the heavy hell-cloud smokes more hotly.
Suddenly morning air rushes in, and drags the flaming curtain down the
mountain. There stood the clear, benignant sun on the Apennine, and
Somma and Ottayano and Vesuvius bloomed in peaceful splendor, and the
world came slowly up after the sun with its mountains, islands, and
coasts. The ring of creation lay gilded upon the sea before me, and as
the magic wands of the rays touched the lands, they started up into
life. And the old royal brother of Vesuvius, Ætna, sat on his golden
throne, and looked out over his land and sea. And the light day rolled
like snow from the mountains down into the sea, melting away in
splendors, and flowed over the broad, happy Campania[102] and into the
dark chestnut-vales. And the earth became boundless, and the sun drew,
in the wide net of rays, the sweetly imprisoned world onward in the
fairest ether.
"O Linda, there sparkled thy outspread island, proudly encamped in the
sea, with the morning redness streaming down over it, a high-masted
war-ship; and an eagle, the bird of the thunder-god, flew into the
blessed distance, as if he bore my heart in his breast away to thy
Epomeo. 'O that I could follow him,' said my spirit. The hot earth gave
claps of thunder, and the smoke enveloped me. I could have died, that
so I might follow the eagle in his flight and be at this moment in
Ischia."
Here the intensely excited soul held itself in. He went or glided down
the declivity towards Portici. In a house which had been mutually fixed
upon beforehand he thought to find again his friend. But he found
neither Dian nor the expected letter from Linda. Enervated by walking,
watching, and glowing, he fell, in the cool, still chamber into a
dreamy sleep. When he awoke, the midnight of the Italian day, the
siesta, embosomed him. All rested under the hot, still light; there was
not a lark in heaven; the green parasols near his window, the pines,
stood unmoved in the earth, and only the poplars rocked gently the
new-born blossoms of the vine which lay in their arms; and the ivy,
which hung from summits, swayed a little. Such shadowy twigs played
once in Lilar in Chariton's chamber, when he was expecting Liana, and
then thought of Italy. The great, level, simple garden from Portici to
Naples--a garden web of villages, groves, and country-houses, washed by
waves--carried his eye over blossoms to his paradise in the sea. This
lonely, still time, full of longing, softened infinitely his fair
heart. He ended the interrupted letter thus:--
"In Portici.
"O my Linda! I am nearer to thee again, but the distance between us
seems to me here in the stillness so vast! O Linda, I love thee with
pangs, both when near and when far,--O with what yet unfelt pangs
should I lose thee? Why am I, then, so certain of thy love? Or so
uncertain? Softly does thy heart speak to me. _Soft_ music or love is
like a _distant_,--and the distant again is like the soft. Has the
sublime pedestal of the thunder-god beside me agitated me so much, or
do I think too vividly of the hollow, dead Herculaneum under me, where
one city is one coffin? Weeping and oppressed, I look over the sea to
the still island whereon thou dwellest. O that it is so long before we
see each other again; that thou dost not draw every thought immediately
out of my heart and I out of thine! Why does the delay of thy letter
prefigure at once greater pains, ah, the greatest, before my soul? Why
do I think; the deepest lines of pain upon our brow, the wrinkles of
life, are only little lines out of the monstrous building-plan which
the world-spirit draws, unconcerned what brows and joys his line of
bliss painfully cuts through? If this line should one day go through
our love--O forgive this premature pang! in this life, this alternation
of transient showers and sunbeams, it may well be permitted."
Here he was interrupted by joy and Dian, attended by an Ischian, who
brought a letter from Linda, and came to take his back with him. He
read it passionately, and added to his own these few more words as a
tear of joy: "Day after to-morrow I come upon the island. What is the
earth in comparison with a heart? Thou art mighty; thou holdest my
whole blooming existence high into the heavens, and it falls upon thee,
if it falls. Farewell! I fear verily neither the hot oil nor the flame
of Psyche."