And now, then, become visible, little peaceful Hesperus--Thou needest a
little cloud to veil thee, and a little year, in order to have
completed thy orbit!—Mayest thou stand nearer to Truth and Virtue, as
thy image in heaven does to the sun, than the earth into which thou
shinest does to either of the three; and mayest thou, like that star,
never withdraw thyself from the sight of men, except by hiding thyself
in the sun! May thy influence be fairer, warmer, and surer than that of
the Almanac-Hesperus, which superstition places on the misty throne of
_this_ year!--Thou wouldst make me happy a second time if thou shouldst
be an _Evening-Star_ to some withered mortal, and to some blooming one
a _morning star_. Sink with the former and rise with the latter; glow
in the evening sky of the first between his clouds, and overspread his
past life-road up the mountain with a soft lustre, that he may
recognize again the far-off flowers of youth; and rejuvenate his
antiquated recollections into hopes!--Cool off the fresh youth in the
early hours of life, as a tranquillizing morning star, ere the sun
falls hot upon him and the whirl of day sets in!--But for me, Hesperus,
thou art now well set; thou hast hitherto journeyed on beside the
earth, as my companion-planet, as my second world, on which my soul
disembarked as it left the body to the buffetings of earth; but to day
my eye falls sadly and slowly off from thee and thy white flower-bed,
which I planted around thy coasts, down upon the damp, cold ground
where I stand, and I see how we are all encompassed with coolness and
evening, torn far away from the stars, amused with glowworms,
disquieted with _ignes fatui_, all veiled from each other, every one
alone, and feeling his own life only through the warm, throbbing hand
of a friend, which he holds in the dark.----
Yes, there will indeed come another age, when it will be light, and
when man will awake out of sublime dreams and find--the dreams again,
because he has lost nothing but sleep.--
The stones and rocks, which two veiled shapes, Necessity and Sin, like
Deucalion and Pyrrha, throw behind them at the good, shall become new
men.--
And on the western gate of this century stands written: Here is the
road to Virtue and Wisdom; just as on the western gate of Cherson[10]
stood the sublime inscription: Here leads the way to Byzantium.----