Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women Read online

  CHAPTER II

  “‘Where is the stream?’ cried he, with tears. ‘Seest thou its not in blue waves above us?’ He looked up, and lo! the blue stream was flowing gently over their heads.” --NOVALIS, Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

  While these strange events were passing through my mind, I suddenly, asone awakes to the consciousness that the sea has been moaning by him forhours, or that the storm has been howling about his window all night,became aware of the sound of running water near me; and, looking out ofbed, I saw that a large green marble basin, in which I was wont to wash,and which stood on a low pedestal of the same material in a corner ofmy room, was overflowing like a spring; and that a stream of clear waterwas running over the carpet, all the length of the room, finding itsoutlet I knew not where. And, stranger still, where this carpet, whichI had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, borderedthe course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed towave in a tiny breeze that followed the water’s flow; while under therivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current,as if they were about to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixedform, become fluent as the waters.

  My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of blackoak, with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carvedin foliage, of which ivy formed the chief part. The nearer end of thistable remained just as it had been, but on the further end a singularchange had commenced. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster ofivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver; thenext looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just beyond ita tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle of one ofthe drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I looked up, and sawthat the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed wereslightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow next, I thoughtit high time to get up; and, springing from the bed, my bare feetalighted upon a cool green sward; and although I dressed in all haste,I found myself completing my toilet under the boughs of a greattree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with manyinterchanging lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding overleaf and branch, as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro, like asinking sea-wave.

  After washing as well as I could in the clear stream, I rose and lookedaround me. The tree under which I seemed to have lain all night was oneof the advanced guard of a dense forest, towards which the rivulet ran.Faint traces of a footpath, much overgrown with grass and moss, and withhere and there a pimpernel even, were discernible along the right bank.“This,” thought I, “must surely be the path into Fairy Land, whichthe lady of last night promised I should so soon find.” I crossed therivulet, and accompanied it, keeping the footpath on its right bank,until it led me, as I expected, into the wood. Here I left it, withoutany good reason: and with a vague feeling that I ought to have followedits course, I took a more southerly direction.