Devereux — Complete

  CHAPTER II.

  THE VICTORY.

  O EARTH! Reservoir of life, over whose deep bosom brood the wings of theUniversal Spirit, shaking upon thee a blessing and a power,--a blessingand a power to produce and reproduce the living from the dead, so thatour flesh is woven from the same atoms which were once the atoms of oursires, and the inexhaustible nutriment of Existence is Decay! O eldestand most solemn Earth, blending even thy loveliness and joy with aterror and an awe! thy sunshine is girt with clouds and circled withstorm and tempest; thy day cometh from the womb of darkness, andreturneth unto darkness, as man returns unto thy bosom. The green herbthat laughs in the valley, the water that sings merrily along the wood;the many-winged and all-searching air, which garners life as a harvestand scatters it as a seed,--all are pregnant with corruption and carrythe cradled death within them, as an oak banqueteth the destroying worm.But who that looks upon thee, and loves thee, and inhales thy blessingswill ever mingle too deep a moral with his joy? Let us not ask whencecome the garlands that we wreathe around our altars or shower upon ourfeasts: will they not bloom as brightly, and breathe with as rich afragrance, whether they be plucked from the garden or the grave? OEarth, my Mother Earth! dark Sepulchre that closes upon all which theFlesh bears, but Vestibule of the vast regions which the Soul shallpass, how leaped my heart within me when I first fathomed thy realspell!

  Yes! never shall I forget the rapture with which I hailed the light thatdawned upon me at last! Never shall I forget the suffocating, the full,the ecstatic joy with which I saw the mightiest of all human hopesaccomplished; and felt, as if an angel spoke, that there is a lifebeyond the grave! Tell me not of the pride of ambition; tell me notof the triumphs of science: never had ambition so lofty an end as thesearch after immortality! never had science so sublime a triumph as theconviction that immortality will be gained! I had been at my task thewhole night,--pale alchymist, seeking from meaner truths to extract thegreatest of all! At the first hour of day, lo! the gold was there: thelabour for which I would have relinquished life was accomplished; thedove descended upon the waters of my soul. I fled from the house. I waspossessed as with a spirit. I ascended a hill, which looked for leaguesover the sleeping valley. A gray mist hung around me like a veil; Ipaused, and the great sun broke slowly forth; I gazed upon its majesty,and my heart swelled. "So rises the soul," I said, "from the vapoursof this dull being; but the soul waneth not, neither setteth it, norknoweth it any night, save that from which it dawneth!" The mists rolledgradually away, the sunshine deepened, and the face of Nature lay insmiles, yet silently, before me. It lay before me, a scene that I hadoften witnessed and hailed and worshipped: _but it was not the same_; aglory had passed over it; it was steeped in a beauty and a holiness, inwhich neither youth nor poetry nor even love had ever robed it before!The change which the earth had undergone was like that of some being wehave loved, when death is passed, and from a mortal it becomes an angel!

  I uttered a cry of joy, and was then as silent as all around me. I feltas if henceforth there was a new compact between Nature and myself. Ifelt as if every tree and blade of grass were henceforth to be eloquentwith a voice and instinct with a spell. I felt as if a religion hadentered into the earth, and made oracles of all that the earth bears;the old fables of Dodona were to become realized, and _the very leaves_to be hallowed by a sanctity and to murmur with a truth. I was no longeronly a part of that which withers and decays; I was no longer a machineof clay, moved by a spring, and to be trodden into the mire which I hadtrod; I was no longer tied to humanity by links which could never bebroken, and which, if broken, would avail me not. I was become, as ifby a miracle, a part of a vast though unseen spirit. It was not to thematter, but to the essences, of things that I bore kindred and alliance;the stars and the heavens resumed over me their ancient influence; and,as I looked along the far hills and the silent landscape, a voice seemedto swell from the stillness, and to say, "I am the life of these things,a spirit distinct from the things themselves. It is to me that youbelong forever and forever: separate, but equally indissoluble; apart,but equally eternal!"

  I spent the day upon the hills. It was evening when I returned. Ilingered by the old fountain, and saw the stars rise, and tremble, oneby one, upon the wave. The hour was that which Isora had loved thebest, and that which the love of her had consecrated the most to me. Andnever, oh, never, did it sink into my heart with a deeper sweetness, ora more soothing balm. I had once more knit my soul to Isora's: I couldonce more look from the toiling and the dim earth, and forget that Isorahad left me, in dreaming of our reunion. Blame me not, you who indulgein a religious hope more severe and more sublime; you who missno footsteps from the earth, nor pine for a voice that your humanwanderings can hear no more,--blame me not, you whose pulses beat notfor the wild love of the created, but whose spirit languishes only for anearer commune with the Creator,--blame me not too harshly for my mortalwishes, nor think that my faith was the less sincere because it wastinted in the most unchanging dyes of the human heart, and indissolublywoven with the memory of the dead! Often from our weaknesses ourstrongest principles of conduct are born; and from the acorn which abreeze has wafted springs the oak which defies the storm.

  The first intoxication and rapture consequent upon the reward of mylabour passed away; but, unlike other excitement, it was followed not bylanguor or a sated and torpid calm: a soothing and delicious sensationpossessed me; my turbulent senses slept; and Memory, recalling theworld, rejoiced at the retreat which Hope had acquired.

  I now surrendered myself to a nobler philosophy than in crowds andcities I had hitherto known. I no longer satirized; I inquired: Ino longer derided; I examined. I looked from the natural proofs ofimmortality to the written promise of our Father; I sought not to bafflemen, but to worship Truth; I applied myself more to the knowledge ofgood and evil; I bowed my soul before the loveliness of Virtue; andthough scenes of wrath and passion yet lowered in the future, and I wasagain speedily called forth to act, to madden, to contend, perchance tosin, the Image is still unbroken, and the Votary has still an offeringfor its Altar!