Or to the Marriage.
Rise, fair Ascension and Marriage day, and gladden readers also! Adorn
thyself with the fairest jewel, with the bride, whose soul is as pure
and glittering as its vesture; like pearl and pearl-muscle, the one, as
the other, lustrous and ornamental! And so over the espalier, whose
fruit-hedge has hitherto divided our darling from his Eden, every
reader now presses after him!--
On the 9th of May, 1793, about three in the morning, there came a sharp
peal of trumpets, like a light-beam, through the dim-red May-dawn; two
twisted horns, with a straight trumpet between them, like a note of
admiration between interrogation-points, were clanging from a house in
which only a parishioner (not the Parson) dwelt and blew; for this
parishioner had last night been celebrating the same ceremony which the
pastor had this day before him. The joyful tallyho raised our Parson
from his broad bed (and the Shock from beneath it, who some weeks ago
had been exiled from the white, sleek coverlet), and this so early,
that in the portraying tester, where on every former morning he had
observed his ruddy visage, and his white bedclothes, all was at present
dim and crayoned.
I confess, the new-painted room, and a gleam of dawn on the wall, made
it so light, that he could see his knee-buckles glancing on the chair.
He then softly awakened his mother (the other guests were to lie for
hours in the sheets), and she had the city cook-maid to awaken, who,
like several other articles of wedding-furniture, had been borrowed for
a day or two from Flachsenfingen. At two doors he knocked in vain, and
without answer; for all were already down at the hearth, cooking,
blowing; and arranging.
How softly does the Spring day gradually fold back its nun-veil,
and the Earth grow bright, as if it were the morning of a
Resurrection!--The quicksilver-pillar of the barometer, the guiding
Fire-pillar of the weather-prophet, rests firmly on Fixlein's Ark
of the Covenant. The Sun raises himself, pure and cool, into the
morning-blue, instead of into the morning-red. Swallows, instead of
clouds, shoot skimming through the melodious air ... O, the good
Genius of Fair Weather, who deserves many temples and festivals
(because without him no festival could be held), lifted an ethereal,
azure Day, as it were, from the well-clear atmosphere of the Moon,
and sent it down, on blue butterfly-wings,--as if it were a _blue_
Monday,--glittering below the Sun, in the zigzag of joyful, quivering
descent, upon the narrow spot of Earth, which our heated fancies are
now viewing .... And on this balmy, vernal spot stand, amid flowers,
over which the trees are shaking blossoms instead of leaves, a bride
and a bridegroom.... Happy Fixlein! how shall I paint thee without
deepening the sighs of longing in the fairest souls?
But soft! we will not drink the magic cup of Fancy to the bottom at six
in the morning; but keep sober till towards night!
At the sound of the morning prayer-bell, the bridegroom, for the din of
preparation was disturbing his quiet orison, went out into the
churchyard, which (as in many other places), together with the church,
lay round his mansion like a court. Here on the moist green, over whose
closed flowers the churchyard wall was still spreading broad shadows,
did his spirit cool itself from the warm dreams of Earth; here, where
the white flat gravestone of his Teacher lay before him like the
fallen-in door on the Janus's-temple of Life, or like the windward side
of the narrow house, turned towards the tempests of the world; here,
where the little shrunk metallic door on the grated cross of his father
uttered to him the inscriptions of death, and the year when his parent
departed, and all the admonitions and mementos, graven on the
lead;--there, I say, his mood grew softer and more solemn; and he now
lifted up by heart his morning prayer, which usually he read; and
entreated God to bless him in his office, and to spare his mother's
life, and to look with favor and acceptance on the purpose of to-day.
Then over the graves he walked into his fenceless little angular
flower-garden; and here, composed and confident in the Divine keeping,
he pressed the stalks of his tulips deeper into the mellow earth.
But on returning to the house, he was met on all hands by the
bell-ringing and the Janizary-music of wedding-gladness;--the
marriage-guests had all thrown off their nightcaps, and were
drinking diligently;--there was a clattering, a cooking, a
frizzling;--tea-services, coffee-services, and warm beer-services, were
advancing in succession; and plates full of bride-cakes were going
round like potters' frames or cistern-wheels.--The Schoolmaster, with
three young lads, was heard rehearsing from his own house an _Arioso_,
with which, so soon as they were perfect, he purposed to surprise his
clerical superior.--But now rushed all the arms of the foaming
joy-streams into one, when the sky-queen besprinkled with blossoms, the
bride, descended upon Earth in her timid joy, full of quivering, humble
love;--when the bells began;--when the procession-column set forth with
the whole village round and before it;--when the organ, the
congregation, the officiating priest, and the sparrows on the trees of
the church-window, struck louder and louder their rolling peals on the
drum of the jubilee-festival.... The heart of the singing bridegroom
was like to leap from its place for joy, "that on his bridal-day it was
all so respectable and grand."--Not till the marriage benediction could
he pray a little.
Still worse and louder grew the business during dinner, when
pastry-work and marchpane-devices were brought forward,--when glasses
and slain fishes (laid under the napkins to frighten the guests) went
round;--and when the guests rose, and themselves went round, and at
length danced round; for they had instrumental music from the city
there.
One minute handed over to the other the sugar-bowl and bottle-case of
joy; the guests heard and saw less and less, and the villagers began to
see and hear more and more, and towards night they penetrated like a
wedge into the open door,--nay, two youths ventured even, in the middle
of the parsonage-court, to mount a plank over a beam, and commence
seesawing. Out of doors, the gleaming vapor of the departed Sun was
encircling the Earth, the evening star was glittering over parsonage
and churchyard; no one heeded it.
However, about nine o'clock,--when the marriage-guests had wellnigh
forgotten the marriage-pair, and were drinking or dancing along for
their own behoof; when poor mortals, in this sunshine of Fate, like
fishes in the sunshine of the sky, were leaping up from their wet, cold
element; and when the bridegroom, under the star of happiness and love,
casting like a comet its long train of radiance over all his heaven,
had in secret pressed to his joy-filled breast his bride and his
mother,--then did he lock a slice of wedding-bread privily into a
press, in the old superstitious belief, that this residue secured
continuance of bread for the whole marriage. As he returned, with
greater love for the sole partner of his life, she herself met him with
his mother, to deliver him in private the bridal-nightgown and
bridal-shirt, as is the ancient usage. Many a countenance grows pale in
violent emotions, even of joy; Thiennette's wax-face was bleaching
still whiter under the sunbeams of Happiness. O never fall, thou lily
of Heaven, and may four springs instead of four seasons open and shut
thy flower-bells to the sun! All the arms of his soul as he floated on
the sea of joy were quivering to clasp the soft, warm heart of his
beloved, to encircle it gently and fast, and draw it to his own....
He led her from the crowded dancing-room into the cool evening. Why
does the evening, does the night, put warmer love in our hearts? Is it
the nightly pressure of helplessness; or is it the exalting separation
from the turmoil of life; that veiling of the world, in which for the
soul nothing more remains but souls;--is it therefore, that the letters
in which the loved name stands written on our spirit appear, like
phosphorus-writing, by night _in fire_, while by day in their _cloudy_
traces they but smoke?
He walked with his bride into the Castle-garden; she hastened quickly
through the castle, and past its servants'-hall, where the fair flowers
of her young life had been crushed broad and dry, under a long, dreary
pressure; and her soul expanded, and breathed in the free open garden,
on whose flowery soil destiny had cast forth the first seeds of the
blossoms which to-day were gladdening her existence. Still Eden! Green
flower-checkered _chiaroscuro_!--The moon is sleeping under ground like
a dead one; but beyond the garden the sun's red evening-clouds have
fallen down like rose-leaves; and the evening-star, the brideman of the
sun, hovers, like a glancing butterfly, above the rosy red, and, modest
as a bride, deprives no single starlet of its light.
The wandering pair arrived at the old gardener's hut; now standing
locked and dumb, with dark windows in the light garden, like a fragment
of the Past surviving in the Present. Bared twigs of trees were
folding, with clammy, half-formed leaves, over the thick, intertwisted
tangles of the bushes.--The Spring was standing, like a conqueror,
with Winter at his feet.--In the blue pond, now bloodless, a dusky
evening-sky lay hollowed out, and the gushing waters were moistening
the flower-beds.--The silver sparks of stars were rising on the altar
of the East, and falling down extinguished in the red sea of the West.
The wind whirred, like a night-bird, louder through the trees; and gave
tones to the acacia-grove, and the tones called to the pair who had
first become happy within it: "Enter, new mortal pair, and think of
what is past, and of my withering and your own; and be holy as
Eternity, and weep not only for joy, but for gratitude also!"--And the
wet-eyed bridegroom led his wet-eyed bride under the blossoms, and laid
his soul, like a flower, on her heart, and said: "Best Thiennette, I am
unspeakably happy, and would say much, and cannot.--Ah, thou Dearest,
we will live like angels, like children together! Surely I will do all
that is good to thee; two years ago I had nothing, no nothing; ah, it
is through thee, best love, that I am happy. I call thee Thou, now,
thou dear good soul!" She drew him closer to her, and said, though
without kissing him: "Call me Thou always, Dearest!"
And as they stept forth again from the sacred grove into the
magic-dusky garden, he took off his hat; first, that he might
internally thank God, and secondly, because he wished to look into this
fairest evening sky.
They reached the blazing, rustling marriage-house, but their softened
hearts sought stillness; and a foreign touch, as in the blossoming
vine, would have disturbed the flower-nuptials of their souls. They
turned rather, and winded up into the churchyard to preserve their
mood. Majestic on the groves and mountains stood the Night before man's
heart, and made it also great. Over the _white_ steeple-obelisk the sky
rested _bluer_ and _darker_; and behind it wavered the withered summit
of the May-pole with faded flag. The son noticed his father's grave, on
which the wind was opening and shutting, with harsh noise, the little
door of the metal cross, to let the year of his death be read on the
brass plate within. An overpowering sadness seized his heart with
violent streams of tears, and drove him to the sunk hillock, and he led
his bride to the grave, and said: "Here sleeps he, my good father; in
his thirty-second year he was carried hither to his long rest. O Thou
good, dear father, couldst thou to-day but see the happiness of thy
son, like my mother! But thy eyes are empty, and thy breast is full of
ashes, and thou seest us not."--He was silent. The bride wept aloud;
she saw the mouldering coffins of her parents open, and the two dead
arise and look round for their daughter, who had stayed so long behind
them, forsaken on the Earth. She fell upon his heart, and faltered: "O
beloved, I have neither father nor mother; do not forsake me!"
O thou who hast still a father and a mother, thank God for it, on the
day when thy soul is full of joyful tears, and needs a bosom wherein to
shed them....
And with this embracing at a father's grave, let this day of joy be
holily concluded.--