The quiet days were passing slowly. Bertram's wound did not heal, and
his strength grew less. The unseen powers that throng the air and watch
our ways arranged about him the phantasmagoria of dissolution. It was
the waning of the moon. A tender mist, which had long veiled a mountain
crest, now unfolded its depths and was wafted away. A star shot across
the welkin and was no more seen. Summer blossoms faded with the dying
season. The music of the pine-boughs had a more melancholy cadence, and
birds of passage took their flight. Atma marked these things, and often
withdrew to lament.
One evening they watched the shadows lengthening. Atma's heart was
oppressed, but Bertram looked on the shifting scene with happy undaunted
smile. In voice pathetic only from mortal weakness and strong with
immortality he said: "When mists and dreams and shadows flee,
And happy hills so far and high
Bend low in benedicite,
I know the break of day is nigh.
Thus have I watched in daisied mead
A grayer heaven bending low,
And heard the music of a brook
In meet response more softly flow,
Until at mystic signal given
From realm entranced the spell was riven,
The sunbeams glanced,
The wavelets danced,
And gladness spread from earth to heaven.
This little flower
Right bravely blooming at my feet
So dainty, sweet,
Has missed the spirit of the hour.
But stay, the tender calyx thrills,
It feels the silence of the hills,
Behold it droops, in haste to be
At one with that hushed company."
Atma: "Not day, but night, beloved friend,
Long doleful night,
The shadows of the eve portend."
Bertram: "Watcher unseeing! what of the night!
'Tis past and gone.
I know th' advance and joy of light!
Look how for it all things put on
Such hues as in comparison
The earth and sky to darkness turn,
Hues of the sard, and chrysolite
And sapphire herald in the morn."
Atma: "Ah! woe is me for day so quickly past,
For morning fled, and noontide unexpressed."
Bertram: "The subtly-quickening breath of morn
my inmost being is borne,
And I behold th' unearthly train
Of solemn splendours that pertain
To seraph state,
Such as our glories symbolize.
They sweep in countless bright convoys
Athwart my blissful view, they seem
Completion of all pleasure known
Or loved, and of our fairest dream
End and interpretation."
Atma: "Let be, my friend; so it be morn to thee
I make no moan, though thy day's dawn shall be
Night of desertion and lament to me."