Yes, I, thrice happy,
have perceived what was highest; I must indeed love thee forever, O
Serpentina! Never shall the golden blossoms of the Lily grow pale;
for, like Belief and Love, Knowledge is eternal."
For the vision, in which I had now beheld Anselmus bodily, in his
Freehold of Atlantis, I stand indebted to the arts of the Salamander;
and most fortunate was it that, when all had melted into air, I found
a paper lying on the violet table, with the foregoing statement of the
matter, written fairly and distinctly by my own hand. But now I felt
myself as if transpierced and torn in pieces by sharp sorrow. "Ah,
happy Anselmus, who hast cast away the burden of week-day life, who
in the love of thy kind Serpentina fliest with bold pinion, and now
livest in rapture and joy on thy Freehold in Atlantis! while I--poor
I!--must soon, nay, in a few moments, leave even this fair hall, which
itself is far from a Freehold in Atlantis, and again be transplanted
to my garret, where, enthralled among the pettinesses of necessitous
existence, my heart and my sight are so bedimmed with thousand
mischiefs, as with thick fog, that the fair Lily will never, never be
beheld by me."
Then Archivarius Lindhorst patted me gently on the shoulder, and said:
"Soft, soft, my honored friend! Lament not so! Were you not even now
in Atlantis, and have you not at least a pretty little copyhold Farm
there, as the poetical possession of your inward sense? And is the
blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a Living in Poesy? Can aught
else but Poesy reveal itself as the sacred Harmony of all Beings, as
the deepest secret of Nature?"
_FRIEDRICH BARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE_
* * * * *
SELECTIONS FROM UNDINE[46] (1811)
TRANSLATED BY F.
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