The Campaner Thal and Other Writings Part 26

A DREAM OF A BATTLE-FIELD.

I dreamed that from far off in the darkness I heard groans which seemed to come from every quarter to which I turned. At length they came only out of the gate of a valley which led between two, rocky ridges, where the darkness was illumined only by the red light of a comet, with its sparkling eye, and its tail sweeping back and forth like that of a tiger thirsty for blood. Then several wagons, filled with amputated hands grasping one the other either in prayer or struggle, came softly towards me on unrevolving wheels; and one small wagon also, full of eyes without eyelids, which grimly gazed upon and mirrored one another.

A long metal coffin, mounted on the wheels of a gun-carriage, was with difficulty pulled along by iron elephants. On it was inscribed, "The ashes of the tenth army." With frightful exertion it was dragged like a tall tree round the corner of the narrow, rocky valley,--forced to bend by the weight of its contents, and the end of it seeming never to come.

Over the earth, and the sorrow of it, was a round ball of fire like a sun, whence came incessant flashes of lightning. And thirsty people opened vessels full of vipers, which darted out, and stung them to more burning thirst.... A crown, great like a shield, and red-hot, came whirling down with circular motion into a group of soldiers dancing, and scattered them. Upon still-gaping wounds it rained down thistles, which took root quickly and grew; and upon every fallen corpse struck a thunderbolt, and slew it again. I looked up to the heavens for consolation; but there, in the place of the sunset's glow, and the colors of the dawn, and the northern lights, was smoking blood. Swift as an arrow, villages and cities shot through the air like long clouds of ashes; some few streets only, which had been blown up by mining, hanging fast in the sky, with the remnants of houses and of men clinging to them. On a neighboring mountain were glaciers and ice-peaks, upon which children were transfixed; and on the distant summits, whence one could look down upon the battle-field, were parents and children and brides, eagerly gazing upon a mirror held over it.

At length the gate sprang open, and broke in pieces on the battle-field, and the storm of woe burst forth. Then I looked in upon that terrible world, and fell senseless to the earth; for what I saw was too horrible for man to look upon or to remember.

Gradually it seemed to me in my swoon as if this frightful field was moving further and further off, while its sounds of horror died away into songs of swans. And out of the distance floated up to me, on the gentle breezes, the tones of shepherd's flutes,--now far off, now near,--breaking, at length, with full sound upon my ear. And then I was lifted up and borne along on wings of ether, with the light breaking through my closed eyelids. And a creative finger touched me, and high in heaven, upon a green cloud, I opened my eyes. Above me was the blue abyss of the stars; below me stretched a blue ocean, on whose horizon glittered, in the glow of the sunset, the countless islands of the blessed; around me floated scattered cloudlets, tinted with the red and white of roses and of lilies, and with the many colors of manifold flowers.

"Who, O G.o.d, has brought me to life out of my woe?" I cried.

"Child of man, it is my Father who has done it," answered a soft voice very near me. But I saw no form of any person; only a halo of glory hovering near me indicated the place of the invisible being.

Under the stare now, on high, rose again, like the songs of the spheres, the old mournful tones. The islands on the horizon began to move, and swim in joy around one another. Many of them dipped into the dark waves, and came up again brilliant as the colors of the morning.

Some went down into the sea, and reappeared covered with pearls. But one of them, crowned with cedars and palms and oaks, with strong young giants on its sh.o.r.es, went straight out into the ocean, toward the east.

"Am I upon earth?" I inquired.

"Ask me not," replied the voice, "for I know all thy thoughts, and will answer thee in thy heart. Thou wilt be upon the earth when it rises in the east from the sea; beneath the sea it circles swiftly round the sun. The sea of time is the wave on the ocean of eternity."

As if borne upon a stream, the cedar island came ever nearer to the green cloud. Youths greater than those of earth looked down upon the blue sea, and sang songs of gladness,--or gazed in rapture upon the heavens, and folded their hands in prayer,--or slumbered in arbors of rainbows and tears of joy. Behind them stood lions; above them circled eagles.

"Upon the cedar island dwell men _who, like me_, have died for the earth; but in earthly faces shall it be revealed to thee how the Infinite Father rewards those who have shed their blood for their country. The youths who are looking down into the waves have a nearer view of their old earth moving in the waters, as the island moves with it. They see only happy countries, and their friends who rejoice in their deeds, and posterity which praises them. And every flower which sprang from their blood is shown to them of G.o.d.

"Those who are gazing up to heaven, and praying, see an altar upon every sun,--and greater brethren who make higher sacrifices to the Highest; and they are entreating the Father to summon them also to still higher sacrifices. And when he thunders, he calls them.

"Those who are slumbering in tears of joy are seeing their brother soldiers dying bravely, and are comforting them in death, and welcoming them in tearful recognition as they pa.s.s from the earth to the island."

And now white flowers floated up from the earth to the surface of the sea, and all the sleepers awoke. The flowers were the souls of their mothers, who in death were following their sons fallen upon the battle-field; and the flowers became angels and flew towards the youths.

It was an endless dying of endless joy. The soft murmurs of love from those who thus again found one another stirred the lilies and the roses to sounds as of harps. But as the mothers breathed the vibrating air and their hearts beat tremulously in harmony with the sound, they died away and exhaled into a flower-cloud. And the cloud arose and floated along the heavens to the distant islands where dwell the good mothers and the happy brides, longing still for the time when all the islands of the blessed were one fixed land of promise.

"Ye sons of men, joy is an eternity older than pain, and ever will be so,--for that has scarcely existed. Sacrifice ye, then, time to eternity."

A n.o.ble old man with the martyr's crown on his head looked up to the green cloud and prayed to the voice near me. Then saw I mirrored in the old man's eyes the form of the being near me. And my heart was humbled before the greatest man of earth as he repeated to me again the words, "Sacrifice time to eternity."

And now there came up from the sea near the cedar island a smoke as of a volcano, but throwing out only crowns of oak-leaves and palm-branches and streams of light. And at length a vast altar covered with young men and old, sleeping, rose from the waves. But when the light of heaven touched the sleepers they awoke suddenly, and, rushing upon the island, fell upon the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their old comrades in arms. And the stars of heaven shone over them in glad, undying token of their union. The oak-forests rustled and the lions roared and the eagles, circling in the air, bathed themselves for joy in the fire and the lightning which shot from the stars. And the storm spread itself over the universe, and scattered b.a.l.l.s of fire like suns, and thundered as with the noise of many worlds, and mingled its hot tears of joy with those of the heroes.

And from below the sea came a dull echo from the earth. Then the cloud sank upon the island, and with a rushing sound received up into itself the heroes who had prayed to the Father to permit them to sacrifice in higher worlds.

When the storm had disappeared with them behind the stars, the vastness of creation appeared. All being rejoiced in eternity. The worlds lay along the heavens like an Alpine chain; the suns encircled the primal source of light; and covering all was the Throne of G.o.d.

"Pray before thou wakest, for the earth, too, will disappear," said the voice near me. And my whole heart was filled with prayer by the very nearness of this higher being. But the green cloud now moved more rapidly with me eastward toward the approaching earth; and the cedar island floated with its happy mult.i.tudes towards the other islands. The sea glowed in the east as with the colors of the dawn; and deeper and deeper sank the green cloud into the aurora of earth.

Suddenly, then, the halo of glory round the head of the invisible being became as a great rainbow, and was absorbed in an infinite radiance which filled the heavens.

And the earth pa.s.sed away like a summer night.

I awoke, and instead of the cloud there was a green meadow around me, and above me glittered the stars. The first night of summer had followed the last night of spring. The moon was rising like a silver bow in the ghostly air. And in the north the sunset colors of the spring were changing upon the mountain-tops into the morning glow of the summer. My heart still clung to the eternal stars, where now awake I lingered in my dream, and I sighed, "Alas! each day above is the beginning of spring." Then I heard the voice in me repeat the old words, "Child of man, sacrifice time to eternity,"--and I sighed no more.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: I need not tell any one that the valley itself is situated in the departments of the Upper Pyrenees.]

[Footnote 2: It is well known that the Symplegadian rocks continually dashed against each other, and destroyed every pa.s.sing ship, until Orpheus's lyre subdued and tranquillized them.]

[Footnote 3: Alluding to a painting by Reynolds, in which Garrick, invited by both Muses, follows Thalia.]

[Footnote 4: A kind of jelly-fish.]

[Footnote 5: Ten drops of this instantly sweeten half a pound of sour beer.]

[Footnote 6: The cave is twenty feet high, but the entrance only five feet.]

[Footnote 7: French miles. The valley is about two German miles--ten English miles--long.]

[Footnote 8: The Hofersche heaven-path, or how to learn the way to eternal salvation in twenty-four hours.]

[Footnote 9: A market-place in Rome where deformed beings were sold, and fetched a higher price the uglier they were.]

[Footnote 10: A Parisian dentist wrote this over his door.]

[Footnote 11: In the same -- Kant says: "Everything that Newton has written in his immortal _Principia_, though such a large head was required to invent it, can be learned; but to compose spirited poems cannot be taught, however complete the instructions for learning the art may be. The reason is, that Newton can explain all the steps he had to take, from the first elements of geometry to his grandest and most profound inventions; he can explain them, not alone to himself, but to others, even to the remote descendants, while no Homer or Wieland can show how his ideally rich, and yet thoughtful characters, came forth from his brain; for he knows it not himself, and therefore cannot teach it others."

I had hoped that I could depend upon Kant, who has a million times more intelligence than I have, as upon a mental _Charge d'Affaires_; but when I came to this pa.s.sage (and to those upon repentance, music, the origin of evil, &c), I saw I must myself follow him, and not only pray after him, as I had before done, but reflect. But to return! Certainly Newton's "Principles" can be learned, that is, the new ones may be repeated, but that also can happen to the invented poems; yet you can be taught to invent them as little as Newton's Principles. A new philosophic idea seems, after its birth, to lie more clearly in its former seed-vessels and organic molecules than a poetic one; but why was Newton the first to see it? He and Kant can discover, no better than Shakespeare or Leibnitz, how the beginning of a new idea suddenly bursts from the cloud of old ones; they can show their _Nexus_ (else they would not be human ones) with the old ones, but not their conception from it; the same holds of the poetic. Let Kant teach us to _invent systems_ and truths (not to prove them, though, strictly speaking, the one is closely allied to the other), then he shall be taught to invent epics, and I will be responsible for it. He seems to me to confound the difficulty of forming ideas with the less important one of forming new ones; the difficulty of transition with the inexplicability of the matter. I fear and wonder at the latent almightiness with which man orders, that is, creates his range of ideas. I know no better symbol of creation than the regularity and causality of the creation of ideas in us, which no will and no mind can regulate and create, for any such arrangement and intention would presuppose the unborn idea. And in this creation the grand enigma of our moral freedom is veiled.]

[Footnote 12: Gold dissolved in strong acid, mixed with a small quant.i.ty of quicksilver in a vial, forms a tree with foliage.]

[Footnote 13: The male glowworms are black.]

[Footnote 14: Rameses caused his son to be fastened to the topmost point of an obelisk, that they who had to raise it should risk a more valuable life than their own.]

[Footnote 15: It lives more than two years, though it does not long survive the period of its leaving the grub-state, just as other insects, to whom nature has given the rose period of youth, only _after_ the th.o.r.n.y age of reproduction.]

[Footnote 16: It is well known that the sight of blood damps courage, and that the Jews are not permitted to eat blood.]

[Footnote 17: Beauty in this connection, I adopt in the same sense which Schiller gives to it in his aesthetic critique, a prize essay of his genius on Beauty, which here, like Longinus, is at once the subject and the delineator of the exalted.]

[Footnote 18: If he had been, I would have read page 224 in the third part of Hesperus to him.]

[Footnote 19: The sun reflected in the water.]

[Footnote 20: At a circ.u.mcision, the Jews place one chair for the operator, and another for the prophet Elias, who is supposed invisibly to occupy it.]

[Footnote 21: These animals shine by night. Care must be taken not to draw them into the brain from the flower calyxes with the perfume.]