"O lady! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live: Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth, A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud, Enveloping the Earth— And from the soul itself must there be sent A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, Of all sweet sounds the life and element!" COLERIDGE. From this time, until I arrived at the palace of Fairy Land, I can attempt no consecutive account of my wanderings and adventures. Everything, henceforward, existed for me in its relation to my attendant. What influence he exercised upon everything into contact with which I was brought, may be understood from a few detached instances. To begin with this very day on which he first joined me: after I had walked heartlessly along for two or three hours, I was very weary, and lay down to rest in a most delightful part of the forest, carpeted with wild flowers. I lay for half an hour in a dull repose, and then got up to pursue my way. The flowers on the spot where I had lain were crushed to the earth: but I saw that they would soon lift their heads and rejoice again in the sun and air. Not so those on which my shadow had lain. The very outline of it could be traced in the withered lifeless grass, and the scorched and shrivelled flowers which stood there, dead, and hopeless of any resurrection. I shuddered, and hastened away with sad forebodings.
In a few days, I had reason to dread an extension of its baleful
influences from the fact, that it was no longer confined to one
position in regard to myself. Hitherto, when seized with an
irresistible desire to look on my evil demon (which longing would
unaccountably seize me at any moment, returning at longer or
shorter intervals, sometimes every minute), I had to turn my head
backwards, and look over my shoulder; in which position, as long
as I could retain it, I was fascinated. But one day, having come
out on a clear grassy hill, which commanded a glorious prospect, though of what I cannot now tell, my shadow moved round, and came in front of me. And, presently, a new manifestation increased my distress. For it began to coruscate, and shoot out on all sides a radiation of dim shadow. These rays of gloom issued from the central shadow as from a black sun, lengthening and shortening with continual change. But wherever a ray struck, that part of earth, or sea, or sky, became void, and desert, and sad to my heart. On this, the first development of its new power, one ray shot out beyond the rest, seeming to lengthen infinitely, until it smote the great sun on the face, which withered and darkened beneath the blow. I turned away and went on. The shadow retreated to its former position; and when I looked again, it had drawn in all its spears of darkness, and followed like a dog at my heels.
Once, as I passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy
child, with two wondrous toys, one in each hand. The one was the
tube through which the fairy-gifted poet looks when he beholds
the same thing everywhere; the other that through which he looks
when he combines into new forms of loveliness those images of
beauty which his own choice has gathered from all regions wherein
he has travelled. Round the child's head was an aureole of
emanating rays. As I looked at him in wonder and delight, round
crept from behind me the something dark, and the child stood in
my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace boy, with a rough
broad-brimmed straw hat, through which brim the sun shone from
behind. The toys he carried were a multiplying-glass and a
kaleidoscope. I sighed and departed.
One evening, as a great silent flood of western gold flowed
through an avenue in the woods, down the stream, just as when I
saw him first, came the sad knight, riding on his chestnut steed.
But his armour did not shine half so red as when I saw him first.