University of Virginia Library

A POET'S DREAM OF THE SOUL.

Hidden among common stones, in a hill-side of
Germany, an agate reposed in deep tranquillity. The
roots of a violet twined about it, and as they embraced
more and more closely, year by year, there grew up
a silent friendship between the stone and the flower.
In Spring, when the plant moved above the surface of
the earth, it transmitted genial sun-warmth, and carried
dim amethystine light into the dark home of the
mineral. Lovingly it breathed forth the secrets of its
life, but the agate could not understand its speech;
for a lower form of existence has merely a vague feeling
of the presence of the grade above it. But from
circling degrees of vegetable life, spirally, through the
violet, passed a subtle influence into the heart of the
agate. It wanted to grow, to spread, to pass upward
into the light. But the laws of its being girdled it
round like a chain of iron.

A shepherd came and stretched himself fondly by

the side of the violet, and piped sweet pastoral music,
thinking the while of the fragrant breath and deep
blue eyes of her he loved. The flower recognised the
lones as a portion of its own soul, and breathed forth
perfumes in harmony. Her deeply moved inward
joy was felt by the mineral, and kindled enthusiastic
longing. Under the glow which renders all forms
fluid, the chain of necessity relaxed, and the agate
expressed its aspiration for vegetable life, in the form
of mosses, roots, and leaves. But soon it touched the
wall of limitation; upward it could not grow.

A compounder of medicines and amulets came digging
for roots and minerals. He pounded the mossagate
to dust, and boiled it with the violet. The
souls passed away from the destroyed forms, to enter
again at some perfect union of Thought and Affection,
a marriage between some of the infinitely various
manifestations of this central duality of the universe.
The spirit of the agate floated far, and was finally attracted
toward a broad inland lake in the wilds of
unknown America. The water-lilies were making
love, and it passed into the seed to which their union
gave birth. In the deep tranquillity of the forest, it
lived a snowy lily with a golden heart, gently swayed
on the waters, to the sound of rippling murmurs.
Brightly solemn was the moon-stillness there. It
agitated the breast of the lily; for the mild planet shed
dewy tears on his brow, as he lay sleeping, and seemed
to say mournfully, “I too am of thy kindred, yet
thou dost not know me.”

Soon came the happy days when the lily wooed his
bride. Gracefully she bowed toward him, and a delicious

languor melted his whole being, as he fondly
veiled her in a golden shower of aroma. Its spiritual
essence pervaded the atmosphere. The birds felt its
influence, though they knew not whence it was. The
wood-pigeons began to coo, and the mocking-bird
poured forth all the loves of the forest. The flowers
thrilled responsive to their extremest roots, and all the
little blossoms wanted to kiss each other.

The remembrance of mineral existence had passed
away from the lily; but with these sounds came vague
reminiscences of kindred vibrations, that wrote the
aspiration of the agate in mossy hieroglyphics on its
bosom. Among the tall trees, a vine was dancing
and laughing in the face of the sun. “It must be a
pleasant life to swing so blithely high up in the air,”
thought the lily: “O, what would I give to be so
much nearer to the stars!” He reared his head, and
tried to imitate the vine; but the waters gently swayed
him backward, and he fell asleep on the bosom of the
lake. A troop of buffaloes came to drink, and in wild
sport they pulled up the lilies, and tossed them on
their horns.

The soul, going forth to enter a new body, arrived
on the southern shores of the Rhone, at the courting
time of blossoms, and became a winged seed, from
which a vine leaped forth. Joyous was its life in that
sunny clime of grapes and olives. Beautiful rainbow-tinted
fairies hovered about it in swarms. They
waltzed on the leaves, and swung from the tendrils,
playing all manner of merry tricks. If a drowsy one
fell asleep in the flower-bells, they tormented him
without mercy, tickling his nose with a butterfly's

feather, or piping through straws in his ear. Not a
word of love could the vine-blossoms breathe to each
other, but the mischievous fairies were listening; and
with a zephyry laugh of silvery sweetness, they would
sing, “Aha, we hear you!” Then the blossoms
would throw perfumes at them, and they would dance
away, springing from leaf to leaf, still shouting, “Aha,
we heard you!” The next minute, the whole troop
would be back again, making ugly faces from a knot-hole
in the tree, pelting the blossoms with dew-drops,
or disturbing their quiet loves with a serenade of musquito
trumpets, and a grotesque accompaniment of
cricket-rasping. But the blossoms delighted in the
frolicksome little imps; for their copers were very
amusing, and at heart they were real friends to love,
and always ready to carry perfumes, or presents of
golden flower-dust, from one to another, on their tiny
wands. They could not reveal secrets, if they would;
because the flowers and the fairies have no secrets;
but many a graceful song they sang of Moth-feather
kissed by Fly-wing, as she lay pretending to be asleep
in a Fox-glove; or how Star-twinkle serenaded Dewdrop
in the bosom of a Rose.

It was a pleasant life the vine led among the butterflies
and fairies; but the stars seemed just as far
off as when he was a lily; and when he saw the great
trees spread their branches high above him, he wished
that he could grow strong, brave, and self-sustaining,
like them. While such wishes were in his heart,
a traveller passed that way, singing light carols as he
went. With careless gayety he switched the vine, the
stem broke, and it hung fainting from the branches.

The fairies mourned over the drooping blossoms, and
sang sweet requiems as its spirit passed away.

On the heights of Mount Helicon, oak-blossoms
were tremulous with love when the vine-spirit floated
over them. He entered into an acorn, and became an
oak. Serenely noble was his life, in a grove consecrated
to the Muses. With calm happiness he gazed
upon the silent stars, or watched his own majestic
shadow dancing on the verdant turf, enamelled with
flowers, which filled the whole air with fragrance.
The olive trees, the walnuts, and the almonds, whispered
to him all the stories of their loves; and the zephyrs,
as they flew by, lingered among his branches, to tell
marvellous stories of the winds they had kissed in
foreign climes. The Dryads, as they leaned against
him, and lovingly twined each other with vernal
crowns from his glossy leaves, talked of primal spirits,
veiled in never-ending varieties of form, gliding in
harmonies through the universe. The murmur of
bees, the music of pastoral flutes, and the silvery flow
of little waterfalls, mingled ever with the melodious
chime of these divine voices. Sometimes, long processions
of beautiful youths, crowned with garlands,
and bearing branches of laurel, passed slowly by,
singing choral hymns in worship of the Muses. The
guardian Nymphs of fountains up among the hills
leaned forward on their flowing urns, listening to the
tuneful sounds; and often the flash of Apollo's harp
might be seen among the trees, lightening the forest
with a golden fire.

Amid this quiet grandeur, the oak forgot the prettiness
of his life with the nimble fairies. But when he

looked down on little streams fringed with oleander
and myrtle, or saw bright-winged butterflies and radiant
little birds sporting in vine-festoons, he felt a
sympathy with the vines and the blossoms, as if they
were somehow allied to his own being. The motion
of the busy little animals excited a vague restlessness;
and when he saw goats skip from rock to rock, or
sheep following the flute of the shepherd far over the
plain, the sap moved more briskly in his veins, and he
began to ask, “How is it beyond those purple hills?
Do trees and Dryads live there? And these moving
things, are their loves more lively and perfect than
ours? Why cannot I also follow that music? Why
must I stand still, and wait for all things to come to
me?” Even the brilliant lizard, when he crawled
over his bark, or twined about his stems, roused within
him a faint desire for motion. And when the
winds and the trees whispered to him their pastoral
romances, he wondered whether the pines, the hazels,
and the zephyrs, there beyond, could tell the story of
love between the moon and the hills, that met so near
them, to bid each other farewell with such a lingering
kiss. There came no answer to these queries; but
the marble statue of Euterpe, in the grove below,
smiled significantly upon him, and the bright warblings
of a flute were heard, which sounded like the
utterance of her smile. A Dryad, crowned with laurel,
and bearing a branch of laurel in her hands, was
inspired by the Muse, and spake prophetically: “That
was the divine voice of Euterpe,” she says; “be patient,
and I will reveal all things.”

Long stood the oak among those Grecian hills.

The whisperings of the forest became like the voices
of familiar friends. But those grand choral hymns,
accompanied by warblings of Euterpe's flute, with
harmonic vibrations from Erato's silver lyre, and
Apollo's golden harp, remained mysteries profound as
the stars. Yet all his fibres unconsciously moved in
harmony, the unintelligible sounds passed into his
inmost being, and modified his outward growth. In
process of time, a woodcutter felled the magnificent
tree, for pillars to an altar of Jove; and weeping Dryads
threw mosses and green garlands over the decaying
roots.

A beautiful lizard, with bright metallic hues, glided
about on the trees and temples of Herculaneum. He
forgot that he had ever been an oak, nor did he know
that he carried on his back the colours of the fäery
songs he had heard as a vine. He led a pleasant life
under the shadow of the leaves, but when Autumn
was far advanced, he found a hole in the ground,
under one of the pillars of the theatre, and crept into
the crevice of a stone to sleep. A torpor came over
him, at first occasionally startled by the sharp clash
of cymbals, or the deep sonorous voice of trombones,
from within the building. But the wind blew sand
into the crevice, the earth covered him, and the unconscious
lizard was entombed alive. Processions of
drunken Bacchantes, with all their furious uproar, did
not rouse him from his lethargy. Vesuvius roared,
as it poured out rivers of fire, but he heard it not.
Through the lapse of silent centuries, he lay there
within a buried city, in a sepulchre of lava. But not
even that long, long sleep, without a dream, could

efface the impressions of his past existences. At last,
some workmen, digging for a well, struck upon a
statue, and the lost city was discovered. Breaking
away the lava with pickaxes and hammers, they dashed
in pieces the stone into which the lizard had crept.
He gasped when the fresh air came upon him, and
died instantly. His lizard-life had passed without aspiration,
and long imprisonment had made him averse
to light. He slipped under ground, and became a
mole, blind as when he was an agate. He could not
see the beauty of the flowers, or the glory of the stars.
But music, the universal soul of all things, came to
him also. A lark built her nest on the ground near
by; and when she returned to her little ones, the
joyful trill of her gushing tones was so full of sunlight,
that it warmed the heart of the poor little mole.
He could not see where the lark went, when he
heard her clear notes ascending far into the sky; but
he felt the expression of a life more free and bright
than his own, and he grew weary of darkness and
silence. As he came out oftener to feel the sunshine,
his rich brown glossy fur attracted the attention of a
boy, who caught him in a trap.

The emancipated spirit passed where birds were
mating on the sea shore, and became a halcyon. He
wooed a lady-bird, and she was enamoured of his beauty,
though neither of them knew that the lark's song
was painted in rainbow-tints upon his plumage.
Their favourite resort was a cave in the Isle of Staffa.
Season after season, he and his successive lady-loves
went there to rear their young, in a deep hole of the
rock, where the tide, as it ebbs and flows, makes

strange wild melody. As the mother brooded over
her nest, he sat patiently by her side, listening to the
measured rhythm of the sea, and the wild crescendo
of the winds. When storms subsided, and rainbows
spanned the rocky island, sirens and mermaids came
riding on the billows, with pearls in their hair, singing
of submarine gardens, where groves of fan-coral
bend like flexile willows, and yellow and crimson seaweeds
float in their fluid element, as gracefully as
banners on the wind. The halcyons, as they glided
above the white wave-wreaths, or sat on the rocks
watching for food, often saw these fantastic creatures
swimming about, merrily pelting each other with pebbles
and shells; and their liquid laughter, mingled
with snatches of song, might be heard afar, as they
went deep down to their grottoes in the sea.

When Winter approached, the happy birds flew to
more Southern climes. During these inland visits,
the halcyon again heard the song of the lark. It
moved him strangely, and he tried to imitate it; but
the sounds came from his throat in harsh twirls, and
refused to echo his tuneful wishes. One day, as the
beautiful bird sat perched on a twig, gazing intently
into the stream, and listening to woodland warbles, a
sportsman pointed his gun at him, and killed him instantly.

The spirit, hovering over Italian shores, went into
the egg of a nightingale, and came forth into an earthly
paradise of soft sunny valleys, and vine-clad hills,
with urns and statues gleaming amid dark groves of
cypress and cedar. When the moon rose above the
hills, with her little one, the evening star, by her side,

and twilight threw over the lovely landscape a veil of
rose-coloured mist, the bird felt the pervading presence
of the beautiful, and poured forth his soul in
songs of exquisite tenderness. Plaintive were the
tones; for the moon spoke into his heart far more sadly
than when he was a water-lily, and with her solemn
voice was mingled the chime of vesper bells across
the water, the melancholy cry of gondoliers, and the
measured plash of their oars. When the sun came
up in golden splendour, flooding hill and dale with brilliant
light, the nightingale nestled with his lady-love
in cool sequestered groves of cypress and ilex, and
listened in dreamy revery to the trickling of many
fountains. Fairies came there and danced in graceful
undulations, to music of liquid sweetness. In their
wildest mirth, they were not so giddy-paced as the
pretty caperers of the Rhone, and more deeply passionate
were the love-stories they confided to the sympathizing
nightingale. When the solemn swell of the
church organ rose on the breeze, the fairies hid away
timidly under leaves, while human voices chanted
their hymns of praise. The nightingale, too, listened
with awe; the majestic sounds disturbed him, like
echoes of thunder among the hills. His mate had
built her nest in low bushes, on the shore of a broad
lagune, and there he was wont to sing to her at eventide.
The gondolas, as they glided by, with lights
glancing on the water, passed his home more slowly,
that passengers might listen to the flowing song.
One night, a violinist in the gondola responded to his
lay. The nightingale answered with an eager gush.
Again the violin replied, more at length. Sadly, and
with a lingering sweetness, the nightingale resumed;
but suddenly broke off, and went silent. The musician
stept on shore, and played a long time under the
shadow of the groves, to the ears of his lady-love, who
leaned from her balcony to listen. Wildly throbbed the
pulses of the nightingale. What was this enchaning
voice? It repeated the sky-tone of the lark, the drowsy
contemplations of the water-lily communing with
the moon, the trills of fairies frisking among the vineblossoms,
the whispers of winds, and trees, and streams,
the siren's song, and the mermaid's laugh. With all
these he had unconsciously acquired sympathy, in the
progress of his being; but mingled with them was a
mysterious utterance of something deeper and more
expansive, that thrilled his little bosom with an agony
of aspiration. When the violin was itself a portion of
trees, the music of winds, and leaves, and streams,
and little birds, had passed into its heart. The poet's
soul likewise listens passively to the voices of nature,
and receives them quietly, as a divine influx. The
violin knew by the poet's manner of questioning, that
he could understand her, and she told him all the
things she had ever heard. But by reason of this
divine harmony between them, his human soul breathed
through her, and made her the messenger of joys
and sorrows far deeper than her own. This it was
that troubled the breast of the nightingale. The next
evening he flooded the whole valley with a rich tide
of song. Men said, “Did ever bird sing so divinely?”
But he felt how far inferior it was to those heavenly
tones, which repeated all the things he had ever
heard, and oppressed him with a prophecy of things
unknown. Evening by evening, his song grew more
sad in its farewell sweetness, and at last was heard
no more. He had pined away and died, longing for
the voice of the violin.

In a happy German home, a young wife leaned
lovingly on the bosom of her chosen mate. They
were not aware that the spirit of a nightingale was
circling round them and would pass into the soul of
their infant son, whom they named Felix Mendelssohn.
The poet-musician, as he grew to manhood, lost all
recollection of his own transmigrations. But often
when his human eyes gazed on lovely scenes for the
first time, Nature looked at him so kindly, and all her
voices spoke so familiarly, that it seemed as if his
soul must have been there before him. The moon
claimed kindred with him, and lulled him into
dreamy revery, as she had done when the undulating
waters cradeled him as a lily. In music, he asked
the fair planet concerning all this, and why she and
the earth always looked into each other's eyes with
such saddened love. Poets, listening to the Concerto,[1]
heard in it the utterance of their souls also; and they
will give it again in painting, sculpture, and verse.
Thus are all forms intertwined by the pervading spirit
which flows through them.

The sleeping flowers wakened vague reminiscences
of tiny radiant forms. Mendelssohn called to them in
music, and the whole faëry troop came dancing on
moon-beams into his “Midsummer Night's Dream.”

The sight of temples and statues brought shadowy
dreams of Draids, and consecrated groves, of choral
hymns, and the rich vibrations of Apollo's harp.
Serene in classic beauty, these visions float through
the music of “Antigone.”

The booming of waves, and the screaming of gulls,
stirred halcyon recollections. He asked in music
whence they came, and Euterpe answered in the picturesque
sea-wildness of his “Fingal's Cave.”

The song of the nightingale brought dim memories
of a pure brilliant atmosphere, of landscapes tinted
with prismatic splendour, of deep blue lakes dimpled
with sun-flecks; and gracefully glides the gondola,
under the glowing sky of Italy, through the flowing
melody of his “Songs without Words.”

But music is to him as the violin was to the nightingale.
It repeats, with puzzling vagueness, all he
has ever known, and troubles his spirit with prophecies
of the infinite unknown. Imploringly he asks
Euterpe to keep her promise, and reveal to him all
the secrets of the universe. Graciously and confidingly
she answers. But as it was with the nightingale,
so is it with him; the utterance belongs to
powers above the circle of his being, and he cannot
comprehend it now. Through the gate which men
call Death, he will pass into more perfect life, where
speech and tone dwell together forever in a golden
marriage.