Once when I was shedding bitter tears, when, dissolved in pain, my hope
was melting away, and I stood alone by the barren hillock which in its
narrow dark bosom hid the vanished form of my Life, lonely as never yet
was lonely man, driven by anguish unspeakable, powerless, and no longer
aught but a conscious misery;--as there I looked about me for help, unable
to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life
with an endless longing: then, out of the blue distances, from the hills
of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight, and at once snapped the
bond of birth, the fetter of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world,
and with it my mourning; the sadness flowed together into a new,
unfathomable world. Thou, soul of the Night, heavenly Slumber, didst come
upon me; the region gently upheaved itself, and over it hovered my
unbound, new-born spirit. The hillock became a cloud of dust, and through
the cloud I saw the glorified face of my beloved. In her eyes eternity
reposed. I laid hold of her hands, and the tears became a sparkling chain
that could not be broken. Into the distance swept by, like a tempest,
thousands of years. On her neck I welcomed the new life with ecstatic
tears. Never was such another dream; then first and ever since I hold fast
an eternal, unchangeable faith in the heaven of the Night, and its sun,
the Beloved.