The Pilgrims of the Rhine
Page 43
CHAPTER XVI. GERTRUDE.--THE EXCURSION TO HAMMERSTEIN.--THOUGHTS.
THE next day they visited the environs of Brohl. Gertrude was unusuallysilent; for her temper, naturally sunny and enthusiastic, was accustomedto light up everything she saw. Ah, once how bounding was that step! howundulating the young graces of that form! how playfully once danced theringlets on that laughing cheek! But she clung to Trevylyan's proud formwith a yet more endearing tenderness than was her wont, and hung yetmore eagerly on his words; her hand sought his, and she often pressed itto her lips, and sighed as she did so. Something that she would not tellseemed passing within her, and sobered her playful mood. But therewas this noticeable in Gertrude: whatever took away from her gayetyincreased her tenderness. The infirmities of her frame never touched hertemper. She was kind, gentle, loving to the last.
They had crossed to the opposite banks, to visit the Castle ofHammerstein. The evening was transparently serene and clear; and thewarmth of the sun yet lingered upon the air, even though the twilighthad passed and the moon risen, as their boat returned by a lengthenedpassage to the village. Broad and straight flows the Rhine in this partof its career. On one side lay the wooded village of Namedy, the hamletof Fornech, backed by the blue rock of Kruezborner Ley, the mountainsthat shield the mysterious Brohl; and on the opposite shore they saw themighty rock of Hammerstein, with the green and livid ruins sleepingin the melancholy moonlight. Two towers rose haughtily above the moredismantled wrecks. How changed since the alternate banners of theSpaniard and the Swede waved from their ramparts, in that great war inwhich the gorgeous Wallenstein won his laurels! And in its mightycalm flowed on the ancestral Rhine, the vessel reflected on its smoothexpanse; and above, girded by thin and shadowy clouds, the moon cast hershadows upon rocks covered with verdure, and brought into a dim lightthe twin spires of Andernach, tranquil in the distance.
"How beautiful is this hour!" said Gertrude, with a low voice, "surelywe do not live enough in the night; one half the beauty of the world isslept away. What in the day can equal the holy calm, the loveliness,and the stillness which the moon now casts over the earth? These,"she continued, pressing Trevylyan's hand, "are hours to remember; and_you_--will you ever forget them?"
Something there is in recollections of such times and scenes that seemnot to belong to real life, but are rather an episode in its history;they are like some wandering into a more ideal world; they refuse toblend with our ruder associations; they live in us, apart and alone, tobe treasured ever, but not lightly to be recalled. There are none livingto whom we can confide them,--who can sympathize with what then wefelt? It is this that makes poetry, and that page which we create as aconfidant to ourselves, necessary to the thoughts that weigh upon thebreast. We write, for our writing is our friend, the inanimate paper isour confessional; we pour forth on it the thoughts that we could tellto no private ear, and are relieved, are consoled. And if genius hasone prerogative dearer than the rest, it is that which enables it to dohonour to the dead,--to revive the beauty, the virtue that are no more;to wreathe chaplets that outlive the day around the urn which were elseforgotten by the world!
When the poet mourns, in his immortal verse, for the dead, tell me notthat fame is in his mind! It is filled by thoughts, by emotions thatshut out the living. He is breathing to his genius--to that sole andconstant friend which has grown up with him from his cradle--the sorrowstoo delicate for human sympathy! and when afterwards he consigns theconfession to the crowd, it is indeed from the hope of honour--, honournot for himself, but for the being that is no more.