Read the book: «The Pilgrims of the Rhine»

TO HENRY LYTTON BULWER.

ALLOW me, my dear Brother, to dedicate this Work to you. The greater part of it (namely, the tales which vary and relieve the voyages of Gertrude and Trevylyan) was written in the pleasant excursion we made together some years ago. Among the associations—some sad and some pleasing—connected with the general design, none are so agreeable to me as those that remind me of the friendship subsisting between us, and which, unlike that of near relations in general, has grown stronger and more intimate as our footsteps have receded farther from the fields where we played together in our childhood. I dedicate this Work to you with the more pleasure, not only when I remember that it has always been a favourite with yourself, but when I think that it is one of my writings most liked in foreign countries; and I may possibly, therefore, have found a record destined to endure the affectionate esteem which this Dedication is intended to convey.

Yours, etc.

E. L. B. LONDON, April 23, 1840.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION

COULD I prescribe to the critic and to the public, I would wish that this work might be tried by the rules rather of poetry than prose, for according to those rules have been both its conception and its execution; and I feel that something of sympathy with the author’s design is requisite to win indulgence for the superstitions he has incorporated with his tale, for the floridity of his style, and the redundance of his descriptions. Perhaps, indeed, it would be impossible, in attempting to paint the scenery and embody some of the Legends of the Rhine, not to give (it may be, too loosely) the reins to the imagination, or to escape the influence of that wild German spirit which I have sought to transfer to a colder tongue.

I have made the experiment of selecting for the main interest of my work the simplest materials, and weaving upon them the ornaments given chiefly to subjects of a more fanciful nature. I know not how far I have succeeded, but various reasons have conspired to make this the work, above all others that I have written, which has given me the most delight (though not unmixed with melancholy) in producing, and in which my mind for the time has been the most completely absorbed. But the ardour of composition is often disproportioned to the merit of the work; and the public sometimes, nor unjustly, avenges itself for that forgetfulness of its existence which makes the chief charm of an author’s solitude,—and the happiest, if not the wisest, inspiration of his dreams.

PREFACE

WITH the younger class of my readers this work has had the good fortune to find especial favour; perhaps because it is in itself a collection of the thoughts and sentiments that constitute the Romance of youth. It has little to do with the positive truths of our actual life, and does not pretend to deal with the larger passions and more stirring interests of our kind. It is but an episode out of the graver epic of human destinies. It requires no explanation of its purpose, and no analysis of its story; the one is evident, the other simple,—the first seeks but to illustrate visible nature through the poetry of the affections; the other is but the narrative of the most real of mortal sorrows, which the Author attempts to take out of the region of pain by various accessories from the Ideal. The connecting tale itself is but the string that binds into a garland the wild-flowers cast upon a grave.

The descriptions of the Rhine have been considered by Germans sufficiently faithful to render this tribute to their land and their legends one of the popular guide-books along the course it illustrates,—especially to such tourists as wish not only to take in with the eye the inventory of the river, but to seize the peculiar spirit which invests the wave and the bank with a beauty that can only be made visible by reflection. He little comprehends the true charm of the Rhine who gazes on the vines on the hill-tops without a thought of the imaginary world with which their recesses have been peopled by the graceful credulity of old; who surveys the steep ruins that overshadow the water, untouched by one lesson from the pensive morality of Time. Everywhere around us is the evidence of perished opinions and departed races; everywhere around us, also, the rejoicing fertility of unconquerable Nature, and the calm progress of Man himself through the infinite cycles of decay. He who would judge adequately of a landscape must regard it not only with the painter’s eye, but with the poet’s. The feelings which the sight of any scene in Nature conveys to the mind—more especially of any scene on which history or fiction has left its trace—must depend upon our sympathy with those associations which make up what may be called the spiritual character of the spot. If indifferent to those associations, we should see only hedgerows and ploughed land in the battle-field of Bannockburn; and the traveller would but look on a dreary waste, whether he stood amidst the piles of the Druid on Salisbury plain, or trod his bewildered way over the broad expanse on which the Chaldaean first learned to number the stars.

To the former editions of this tale was prefixed a poem on “The Ideal,” which had all the worst faults of the author’s earliest compositions in verse. The present poem (with the exception of a very few lines) has been entirely rewritten, and has at least the comparative merit of being less vague in the thought, and less unpolished in the diction, than that which it replaces.

THE IDEAL WORLD

I

THE IDEAL WORLD,—ITS REALM IS EVERYWHERE AROUND US; ITS INHABITANTS ARE

THE IMMORTAL PERSONIFICATIONS OF ALL BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS; TO THAT WORLD WE

ATTAIN BY THE REPOSE OF THE SENSES

 
  AROUND “this visible diurnal sphere”
     There floats a World that girds us like the space;
  On wandering clouds and gliding beams career
    Its ever-moving murmurous Populace.
  There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below
    Ascending live, and in celestial shapes.
  To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go?
    Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes:
  To care, to sin, to passion close thine eyes;
  Sleep in the flesh, and see the Dreamland rise!
  Hark to the gush of golden waterfalls,
  Or knightly tromps at Archimagian Walls!
  In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark
    The River Maid her amber tresses knitting;
  When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark,
    And silver clouds o’er summer stars are flitting,
  With jocund elves invade “the Moone’s sphere,
  Or hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear;”¹
  Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn
    Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves
  Joy into song, the blithe Arcadian Faun
    Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves,
  While slowly gleaming through the purple glade
  Come Evian’s panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid.
 
 
  Such, O Ideal World, thy habitants!
    All the fair children of creative creeds,
  All the lost tribes of Fantasy are thine,—
  From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts,
    Or Pan’s first music waked from shepherd reeds,
  To the last sprite when Heaven’s pale lamps decline,
  Heard wailing soft along the solemn Rhine.
 

II

OUR DREAMS BELONG TO THE IDEAL.—THE DIVINER LOVE FOR WHICH YOUTH SIGHS

NOT ATTAINABLE IN LIFE, BUT THE PURSUIT OF THAT LOVE BEYOND THE WORLD OF

THE SENSES PURIFIES THE SOUL AND AWAKES THE GENIUS.—PETRARCH.—DANTE

 
  Thine are the Dreams that pass the Ivory Gates,
    With prophet shadows haunting poet eyes!
  Thine the belov’d illusions youth creates
    From the dim haze of its own happy skies.
  In vain we pine; we yearn on earth to win
    The being of the heart, our boyhood’s dream.
  The Psyche and the Eros ne’er have been,
    Save in Olympus, wedded!  As a stream
  Glasses a star, so life the ideal love;
  Restless the stream below, serene the orb above!
  Ever the soul the senses shall deceive;
  Here custom chill, there kinder fate bereave:
  For mortal lips unmeet eternal vows!
  And Eden’s flowers for Adam’s mournful brows!
  We seek to make the moment’s angel guest
    The household dweller at a human hearth;
  We chase the bird of Paradise, whose nest
    Was never found amid the bowers of earth.²
 
 
  Yet loftier joys the vain pursuit may bring,
    Than sate the senses with the boons of time;
  The bird of Heaven hath still an upward wing,
    The steps it lures are still the steps that climb;
  And in the ascent although the soil be bare,
  More clear the daylight and more pure the air.
  Let Petrarch’s heart the human mistress lose,
  He mourns the Laura but to win the Muse.
  Could all the charms which Georgian maids combine
  Delight the soul of the dark Florentine,
  Like one chaste dream of childlike Beatrice
  Awaiting Hell’s dark pilgrim in the skies,
  Snatched from below to be the guide above,
  And clothe Religion in the form of Love?*
    * It is supposed by many of the commentators on Dante, that in
      the form of his lost Beatrice, who guides him in his Vision
      of Heaven, he allegorizes Religious Faith.
 

III

GENIUS, LIFTING ITS LIFE TO THE IDEAL, BECOMES ITSELF A PURE IDEA: IT

MUST COMPREHEND ALL EXISTENCE, ALL HUMAN SINS AND SUFFERINGS; BUT IN

COMPREHENDING, IT TRANSMUTES THEM.—THE POET IN HIS TWO-FOLD BEING,—THE

ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL.—THE INFLUENCE OF GENIUS OVER THE STERNEST

REALITIES OF EARTH; OVER OUR PASSIONS; WARS AND SUPERSTITIONS.—ITS

IDENTITY IS WITH HUMAN PROGRESS.—ITS AGENCY, EVEN WHERE UNACKNOWLEDGED,

IS UNIVERSAL

 
  Oh, thou true Iris! sporting on thy bow
    Of tears and smiles! Jove’s herald, Poetry,
  Thou reflex image of all joy and woe,
    Both fused in light by thy dear fantasy!
  Lo! from the clay how Genius lifts its life,
    And grows one pure Idea, one calm soul!
  True, its own clearness must reflect our strife;
    True, its completeness must comprise our whole;
  But as the sun transmutes the sullen hues
    Of marsh-grown vapours into vermeil dyes,
  And melts them later into twilight dews,
    Shedding on flowers the baptism of the skies;
  So glows the Ideal in the air we breathe,
    So from the fumes of sorrow and of sin,
  Doth its warm light in rosy colours wreathe
    Its playful cloudland, storing balms within.
 
 
  Survey the Poet in his mortal mould,
    Man, amongst men, descended from his throne!
  The moth that chased the star now frets the fold,
    Our cares, our faults, our follies are his own.
  Passions as idle, and desires as vain,
  Vex the wild heart, and dupe the erring brain.
  From Freedom’s field the recreant Horace flies
  To kiss the hand by which his country dies;
  From Mary’s grave the mighty Peasant turns,
  And hoarse with orgies rings the laugh of Burns.
  While Rousseau’s lips a lackey’s vices own,—
  Lips that could draw the thunder on a throne!
  But when from Life the Actual GENIUS springs,
    When, self-transformed by its own magic rod,
  It snaps the fetters and expands the wings,
    And drops the fleshly garb that veiled the god,
  How the mists vanish as the form ascends!
  How in its aureole every sunbeam blends!
  By the Arch-Brightener of Creation seen,
    How dim the crowns on perishable brows!
  The snows of Atlas melt beneath the sheen,
    Through Thebaid caves the rushing splendour flows.
  Cimmerian glooms with Asian beams are bright,
  And Earth reposes in a belt of light.
  Now stern as Vengeance shines the awful form,
  Armed with the bolt and glowing through the storm;
  Sets the great deeps of human passion free,
  And whelms the bulwarks that would breast the sea.
  Roused by its voice the ghastly Wars arise,
  Mars reddens earth, the Valkyrs pale the skies;
  Dim Superstition from her hell escapes,
  With all her shadowy brood of monster shapes;
  Here life itself the scowl of Typhon³ takes;
  There Conscience shudders at Alecto’s snakes;
  From Gothic graves at midnight yawning wide,
  In gory cerements gibbering spectres glide;
  And where o’er blasted heaths the lightnings flame,
  Black secret hags “do deeds without a name!”
   Yet through its direst agencies of awe,
  Light marks its presence and pervades its law,
  And, like Orion when the storms are loud,
  It links creation while it gilds a cloud.
  By ruthless Thor, free Thought, frank Honour stand,
  Fame’s grand desire, and zeal for Fatherland.
  The grim Religion of Barbarian Fear
  With some Hereafter still connects the Here,
  Lifts the gross sense to some spiritual source,
  And thrones some Jove above the Titan Force,
  Till, love completing what in awe began,
  From the rude savage dawns the thoughtful man.
 
 
  Then, oh, behold the Glorious comforter!
    Still bright’ning worlds but gladd’ning now the hearth,
  Or like the lustre of our nearest star,
    Fused in the common atmosphere of earth.
  It sports like hope upon the captive’s chain;
  Descends in dreams upon the couch of pain;
  To wonder’s realm allures the earnest child;
  To the chaste love refines the instinct wild;
  And as in waters the reflected beam,
  Still where we turn, glides with us up the stream,
  And while in truth the whole expanse is bright,
  Yields to each eye its own fond path of light,—
  So over life the rays of Genius fall,
  Give each his track because illuming all.
 

IV

FORGIVENESS TO THE ERRORS OF OUR BENEFACTORS

 
  Hence is that secret pardon we bestow
    In the true instinct of the grateful heart,
  Upon the Sons of Song.  The good they do
    In the clear world of their Uranian art
  Endures forever; while the evil done
    In the poor drama of their mortal scene,
  Is but a passing cloud before the sun;
    Space hath no record where the mist hath been.
  Boots it to us if Shakspeare erred like man?
    Why idly question that most mystic life?
  Eno’ the giver in his gifts to scan;
    To bless the sheaves with which thy fields are rife,
  Nor, blundering, guess through what obstructive clay
  The glorious corn-seed struggled up to day.
 

V

THE IDEAL IS NOT CONFINED TO POETS.—ALGERNON SIDNEY RECOGNIZES HIS IDEAL

IN LIBERTY, AND BELIEVES IN ITS TRIUMPH WHERE THE MERE PRACTICAL MAN

COULD BEHOLD BUT ITS RUINS; YET LIBERTY IN THIS WORLD MUST EVER BE AN

IDEAL, AND THE LAND THAT IT PROMISES CAN BE FOUND BUT IN DEATH

 
  But not to you alone, O Sons Of Song,
  The wings that float the loftier airs along.
  Whoever lifts us from the dust we are,
    Beyond the sensual to spiritual goals;
  Who from the MOMENT and the SELF afar
    By deathless deeds allures reluctant souls,
  Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws,—
  Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.⁴
  Recall the Wars of England’s giant-born,
    Is Elyot’s voice, is Hampden’s death in vain?
  Have all the meteors of the vernal morn
    But wasted light upon a frozen main?
  Where is that child of Carnage, Freedom, flown?
  The Sybarite lolls upon the martyr’s throne.
  Lewd, ribald jests succeed to solemn zeal;
  And things of silk to Cromwell’s men of steel.
  Cold are the hosts the tromps of Ireton thrilled,
  And hushed the senates Vane’s large presence filled.
  In what strong heart doth the old manhood dwell?
  Where art thou, Freedom?  Look! in Sidney’s cell!
  There still as stately stands the living Truth,
  Smiling on age as it had smiled on youth.
  Her forts dismantled, and her shrines o’erthrown,
  The headsman’s block her last dread altar-stone,
  No sanction left to Reason’s vulgar hope,
  Far from the wrecks expands her prophet’s scope.
  Millennial morns the tombs of Kedron gild,
  The hands of saints the glorious walls rebuild,—
  Till each foundation garnished with its gem,
  High o’er Gehenna flames Jerusalem!
  O thou blood-stained Ideal of the free,
  Whose breath is heard in clarions,—Liberty!
  Sublimer for thy grand illusions past,
  Thou spring’st to Heaven,—Religion at the last.
  Alike below, or commonwealths or thrones,
  Where’er men gather some crushed victim groans;
  Only in death thy real form we see,
  All life is bondage,—souls alone are free.
  Thus through the waste the wandering Hebrews went,
  Fire on the march, but cloud upon the tent.
  At last on Pisgah see the prophet stand,
  Before his vision spreads the PROMISED LAND;
  But where revealed the Canaan to his eye?—
  Upon the mountain he ascends to die.
 

VI

YET ALL HAVE TWO ESCAPES INTO THE IDEAL WORLD; NAMELY, MEMORY AND

HOPE.—EXAMPLE OF HOPE IN YOUTH, HOWEVER EXCLUDED FROM ACTION AND

DESIRE.—NAPOLEON’S SON

 
  Yet whatsoever be our bondage here,
  All have two portals to the phantom sphere.
  What hath not glided through those gates that ope
  Beyond the Hour, to MEMORY or to HOPE!
  Give Youth the Garden,—still it soars above,
  Seeks some far glory, some diviner love.
  Place Age amidst the Golgotha,—its eyes
  Still quit the graves, to rest upon the skies;
  And while the dust, unheeded, moulders there,
  Track some lost angel through cerulean air.
 
 
  Lo! where the Austrian binds, with formal chain,
  The crownless son of earth’s last Charlemagne,—
  Him, at whose birth laughed all the violet vales
    (While yet unfallen stood thy sovereign star,
  O Lucifer of nations).  Hark, the gales
    Swell with the shout from all the hosts, whose war
  Rended the Alps, and crimsoned Memphian Nile,—
    “Way for the coming of the Conqueror’s Son:
  Woe to the Merchant-Carthage of the Isle!
    Woe to the Scythian ice-world of the Don!
  O Thunder Lord, thy Lemnian bolts prepare,
  The Eagle’s eyry hath its eagle heir!”
   Hark, at that shout from north to south, gray Power
    Quails on its weak, hereditary thrones;
  And widowed mothers prophesy the hour
    Of future carnage to their cradled sons.
  What! shall our race to blood be thus consigned,
    And Ate claim an heirloom in mankind?
  Are these red lots unshaken in the urn?
  Years pass; approach, pale Questioner, and learn
  Chained to his rock, with brows that vainly frown,
  The fallen Titan sinks in darkness down!
  And sadly gazing through his gilded grate,
  Behold the child whose birth was as a fate!
  Far from the land in which his life began;
  Walled from the healthful air of hardy man;
  Reared by cold hearts, and watched by jealous eyes,
  His guardians jailers, and his comrades spies.
  Each trite convention courtly fears inspire
  To stint experience and to dwarf desire;
  Narrows the action to a puppet stage,
  And trains the eaglet to the starling’s cage.
  On the dejected brow and smileless cheek,
  What weary thought the languid lines bespeak;
  Till drop by drop, from jaded day to day,
  The sickly life-streams ooze themselves away.
  Yet oft in HOPE a boundless realm was thine,
    That vaguest Infinite,—the Dream of Fame;
  Son of the sword that first made kings divine,
    Heir to man’s grandest royalty,—a Name!
  Then didst thou burst upon the startled world,
  And keep the glorious promise of thy birth;
  Then were the wings that bear the bolt unfurled,
    A monarch’s voice cried, “Place upon the earth!”
   A new Philippi gained a second Rome,
  And the Son’s sword avenged the greater Caesar’s doom.
 

VII

EXAMPLE OF MEMORY AS LEADING TO THE IDEAL,—AMIDST LIFE HOWEVER HUMBLE, AND IN A MIND HOWEVER IGNORANT.—THE VILLAGE WIDOW

 
  But turn the eye to life’s sequestered vale
    And lowly roofs remote in hamlets green.
  Oft in my boyhood where the moss-grown pale
    Fenced quiet graves, a female form was seen;
  Each eve she sought the melancholy ground,
  And lingering paused, and wistful looked around.
  If yet some footstep rustled through the grass,
  Timorous she shrunk, and watched the shadow pass;
  Then, when the spot lay lone amidst the gloom,
  Crept to one grave too humble for a tomb,
  There silent bowed her face above the dead,
  For, if in prayer, the prayer was inly said;
  Still as the moonbeam, paused her quiet shade,
  Still as the moonbeam, through the yews to fade.
  Whose dust thus hallowed by so fond a care?
  What the grave saith not, let the heart declare.
    On yonder green two orphan children played;
  By yonder rill two plighted lovers strayed;
  In yonder shrine two lives were blent in one,
  And joy-bells chimed beneath a summer sun.
  Poor was their lot, their bread in labour found;
  No parent blessed them, and no kindred owned;
  They smiled to hear the wise their choice condemn;
  They loved—they loved—and love was wealth to them!
  Hark—one short week—again the holy bell!
  Still shone the sun; but dirge like boomed the knell,—
  The icy hand had severed breast from breast;
  Left life to toil, and summoned Death to rest.
  Full fifty years since then have passed away,
  Her cheek is furrowed, and her hair is gray.
  Yet, when she speaks of him (the times are rare),
  Hear in her voice how youth still trembles there.
  The very name of that young life that died
  Still heaves the bosom, and recalls the bride.
  Lone o’er the widow’s hearth those years have fled,
  The daily toil still wins the daily bread;
  No books deck sorrow with fantastic dyes;
  Her fond romance her woman heart supplies;
  And, haply in the few still moments given,
  (Day’s taskwork done), to memory, death, and heaven,
  To that unuttered poem may belong
  Thoughts of such pathos as had beggared song.
 

VIII

HENCE IN HOPE, MEMORY, AND PRAYER, ALL OF US ARE POETS

 
  Yes, while thou hopest, music fills the air,
    While thou rememberest, life reclothes the clod;
  While thou canst feel the electric chain of prayer,
    Breathe but a thought, and be a soul with God!
  Let not these forms of matter bound thine eye.
    He who the vanishing point of Human things
  Lifts from the landscape, lost amidst the sky,
    Has found the Ideal which the poet sings,
  Has pierced the pall around the senses thrown,
  And is himself a poet, though unknown.
 

IX

APPLICATION OF THE POEM TO THE TALE TO WHICH IT IS PREFIXED.—THE

RHINE,—ITS IDEAL CHARACTER IN ITS HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY ASSOCIATIONS

 
  Eno’!—my song is closing, and to thee,
    Land of the North, I dedicate its lay;
  As I have done the simple tale to be
    The drama of this prelude!
                                    Faraway
  Rolls the swift Rhine beneath the starry ray;
  But to my ear its haunted waters sigh;
  Its moonlight mountains glimmer on my eye;
  On wave, on marge, as on a wizard’s glass,
  Imperial ghosts in dim procession pass;
  Lords of the wild, the first great Father-men,
  Their fane the hill-top, and their home the glen;
  Frowning they fade; a bridge of steel appears
  With frank-eyed Caesar smiling through the spears;
  The march moves onwards, and the mirror brings
  The Gothic crowns of Carlovingian kings
  Vanished alike!  The Hermit rears his Cross,
  And barbs neigh shrill, and plumes in tumult toss,
  While (knighthood’s sole sweet conquest from the Moor)
  Sings to Arabian lutes the Tourbadour.
    Not yet, not yet; still glide some lingering shades,
  Still breathe some murmurs as the starlight fades,
  Still from her rock I hear the Siren call,
  And see the tender ghost in Roland’s mouldering hall!
 

X

APPLICATION OF THE POEM CONTINUED.—THE IDEAL LENDS ITS AID TO THE MOST FAMILIAR AND THE MOST ACTUAL SORROW OF LIFE.—FICTION COMPARED TO SLEEP,—IT STRENGTHENS WHILE IT SOOTHES

 
  Trite were the tale I tell of love and doom,
  (Whose life hath loved not, whose not mourned a tomb?)
  But fiction draws a poetry from grief,
  As art its healing from the withered leaf.
  Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the sombre truth,
    Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch!
  When death the altar and the victim youth,
    Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the porch.
  As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail,
  Clothe the rude hill-tops, lull the Northern gale;
  With childlike lore the fatal course beguile,
  And brighten death with Love’s untiring smile.
  Along the banks let fairy forms be seen
  “By fountain clear, or spangled starlike sheen.”⁵
  Let sound and shape to which the sense is dull
  Haunt the soul opening on the Beautiful.
  And when at length, the symbol voyage done,
  Surviving Grief shrinks lonely from the sun,
  By tender types show Grief what memories bloom
  From lost delight, what fairies guard the tomb.
  Scorn not the dream, O world-worn; pause a while,
  New strength shall nerve thee as the dreams beguile,
  Stung by the rest, less far shall seem the goal!
  As sleep to life, so fiction to the soul.