Adela Cathcart, Volume 2

"I don't say they are," returned the doctor; "but many a pain is relieved by finding its expression. I wish he had never written worse."

"That is not why I like them," said the curate. "They seem to me to hold the same place in literature that our dreams do in life. If so much of our life is actually spent in dreaming, there must be some place in our literature for what corresponds to dreaming. Even in this region, we cannot step beyond the boundaries of our nature. I delight in reading Lord Bacon now; but one of Jean Paul's dreams will often give me more delight than one of Bacon's best paragraphs. It depends upon the mood. Some dreams like these, in poetry or in sleep, arouse individual states of consciousness altogether different from any of our waking moods, and not to be recalled by any mere effort of the will. All our being, for the moment, has a new and strange colouring. We have another kind of life. I think myself, our life would be much poorer without our dreams; a thousand rainbow tints and combinations would be gone; music and poetry would lose many an indescribable exquisiteness and tenderness. You see I like to take our dreams seriously, as I would even our fun. For I believe that those new mysterious feelings that come to us in sleep, if they be only from dreams of a richer grass and a softer wind than we have known awake, are indications of wells of feeling and delight which have not yet broken out of their hiding-places in our souls, and are only to be suspected from these rings of fairy green that spring up in the high places of our sleep."

"I say, Ralph," interrupted Harry, "just repeat that strangest of Heine's ballads, that—"

"Oh, no, no; not that one. Mrs. Cathcart would not like it at all."

"Yes, please do," said Adela.

"Pray don't think of me, gentlemen," said the aunt.

"No, I won't," said the curate.

"Then I will," said the doctor, with a glance at Adela, which seemed to say—"If you want it, you shall have it, whether they like it or not."

He repeated, with just a touch of the recitative in his tone, the following verses:

"Night lay upon mine eyelids;
Upon my mouth lay lead;
With withered heart and sinews,
I lay among the dead.

"How long I lay and slumbered,
I knew not in the gloom.
I wakened up, and listened
To a knocking at my tomb.

"'Wilt thou not rise, my Henry?
Immortal day draws on;
The dead are all arisen;
The endless joy begun.'

"'My love, I cannot raise me;
Nor could I find the door;
My eyes with bitter weeping
Are blind for evermore.'

"'But from thine eyes, dear Henry,
I'll kiss away the night;
Thou shall behold the angels,
And Heaven's own blessed light.'

"'My love, I cannot raise me;
The blood is flowing still,
Where thou, heart-deep, didst stab me,
With a dagger-speech, to kill.'

"'Oh! I will lay my hand, Henry,
So soft upon thy heart;
And that will stop the bleeding—
Stop all the bitter smart.'

"'My love, I cannot raise me;
My head is bleeding too.
When thou wast stolen from me,
I shot it through and through.'

"'With my thick hair, my Henry,
I will stop the fountain red;
Press back again the blood-stream,
And heal thy wounded head.'

"She begged so soft, so dearly,
I could no more say no;
Writhing, I strove to raise me,
And to the maiden go.

"Then the wounds again burst open;
And afresh the torrents break
From head and heart—life's torrents—
And lo! I am awake."

"There now, that is enough!" said the curate. "That is not nice—is it, Mrs. Cathcart?"

Mrs. Cathcart smiled, and said:

"I should hardly have thought your time well-spent in translating it, Mr. Armstrong."

"It took me a few idle minutes only," said the curate. "But my foolish brother, who has a child's fancy for horrid things, took a fancy to that; and so he won't let my sins be forgotten. But I will take away the taste of it with another of Heine's, seeing we have fallen upon him. I should never have dreamed of introducing him here. It was Miss Cathcart's first song that opened the vein, I believe."

"I am the guilty person," said Adela; "and I fear I am not sorry for my sins—the consequences have been too pleasant. Do go on, Mr. Armstrong."

He repeated:

"Peace

"High in the heavens the sun was glowing;
Around him the white clouds, like waves, were flowing;
The sea was very still and grey.
Dreamily thinking as I lay,
Close by the gliding vessel's wheel,
A sleepless slumber did o'er me steal;
And I saw the Christ, the healer of woe,
In white and waving garments go;
Walking in giant form went he
Over the land and sea.
High in the heaven he towered his head,
And his hands in blessing forth he spread
Over the land and sea.