It was no light or easy journey he had thus rashly undertaken on the faith of a dream,--for dream he still believed it to be. Many weary days and nights were consumed in the comfortless tedium of travel, . . and though he constantly told himself what unheard-of folly it was to pursue an illusive chimera of his own imagination,--a mere phantasm which had somehow or other taken possession of his brain at a time when that brain must have been acted upon (so he continued to think) by strong mesmeric or magnetic influence, he went on his way all the same with a sort of dogged obstinacy which no fatigue could daunt or lessen.
He never lay down to rest without the faint hope of seeing once again, if only in sleep, the radiant Being whose haunting words had sent him on this quest of "Ardath,"--but herein his expectations were not realized. No more flower-crowned angels floated before him--no sweet whisper of love, encouragement, or promise came mysteriously on his ears in the midnight silences,--his slumbers were always profound and placid as those of a child and utterly dreamless.
One consolation he had however, ... he could write. Not a day passed without his finding some new inspiration ... some fresh, quaint, and lovely thought, that flowed of itself into most perfect and rhythmical utterance,--glorious lines of verse glowing with fervor and beauty seemed to fall from his pencil without any effort on his part,--and if he had had reason in former times to doubt the strength of his poetical faculty, it was now very certain he could do so longer. His mind was as a fine harp newly strung, attuned, and quivering with the consciousness of the music pent-up within it,--and as he remembered the masterpiece of poesy he had written in his seeming trance, the manuscript of which would soon be in the hands of the London publishers, his heart swelled with a growing and irrepressible sense of pride. For he knew and felt--with an undefinable yet positive certainty--that however much the public or the critics might gainsay him, his fame as a poet of the very highest order would ere long be asserted and assured.
A deep tranquillity was in his soul ... a tranquillity that seemed to increase the further he went onward,--the restless weariness that had once possessed him was past, and a vaguely sweet content pervade his being like the odor of early roses pervading warm air ... he felt, he hoped, he loved! ... and yet his feelings, hopes, and longings turned to something altogether undeclared and indefinite, as softly dim and distant as the first faint white cloud-signal wafted from the moon in heaven, when, on the point of rising, she makes her queenly purpose known to her waiting star-attendants.