Rampolli | Page 3

heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me; the region gently upheaved
itself, and over it hovered my unbound, new-born spirit. The hillock
became a cloud of dust, and through the cloud I saw the glorified face
of my beloved. In her eyes eternity reposed. I laid hold of her hands,
and the tears became a sparkling chain that could not be broken. Into
the distance swept by, like a tempest, thousands of years. On her neck I
welcomed the new life with ecstatic tears. Never was such another
dream; then first and ever since I hold fast an eternal, unchangeable
faith in the heaven of the Night, and its sun, the Beloved.
IV.
Now I know when will come the last morning: when the light no more
scares away the Night and Love, when sleep shall be without waking,
and but one continuous dream. I feel in me a celestial exhaustion. Long
and weariful was my pilgrimage to the holy grave, and crushing was
the cross. The crystal wave, which, imperceptible to the ordinary sense,

springs in the dark bosom of the hillock against whoose foot breaks the
flood of the world, he who has tasted it, he who has stood on the
mountain frontier of the world, and looked across into the new land,
into the abode of the Night, verily he turns not again into the tumult of
the world, into the land where dwells the Light in ceaseless unrest.
On those heights he builds for himself tabernacles--tabernacles of peace;
there longs and loves and gazes across, until the welcomest of all hours
draws him down into the waters of the spring. Afloat above remains
what is earthly, and is swept back in storms; but what became holy by
the touch of Love, runs free through hidden ways to the region beyond,
where, like odours, it mingles with love asleep. Still wakest thou,
cheerful Light, the weary man to his labour, and into me pourest
gladsome life; but thou wilest me not away from Memory's mossgrown
monument. Gladly will I bestir the deedy hands, everywhere behold
where thou hast need of me; bepraise the rich pomp of thy splendour;
pursue unwearied the lovely harmonies of thy skilled handicraft; gladly
contemplate the thoughtful pace of thy mighty, radiant clock; explore
the balance of the forces and the laws of the wondrous play of countless
worlds and their seasons; but true to the Night remains my secret heart,
and to creative Love, her daughter. Canst thou show me a heart
eternally true? Has thy sun friendly eyes that know me? Do thy stars
lay hold of my longing hand? Do they return me the tender pressure
and the caressing word? Was it thou didst bedeck them with colours
and a flickering outline? Or was it she who gave to thy jewels a higher,
a dearer significance? What delight, what pleasure offers thy life, to
outweigh the transports of Death? Wears not everything that inspirits us
the livery of the Night? Thy mother, it is she who brings thee forth, and
to her thou owest all thy glory. Thou wouldst vanish into thyself, thou
wouldst dissipate in boundless space, if she did not hold thee fast, if she
swaddled thee not, so that thou grewest warm, and, flaming, gavest
birth to the universe. Verily I was before thou wast; the mother sent me
with my sisters to inhabit thy world, to sanctify it with love that it
might be an ever present memorial, to plant it with flowers unfading.
As yet they have not ripened, these thoughts divine; as yet is there
small trace of our coming apocalypse. One day thy clock will point to
the end of Time, and then thou shalt be as one of us, and shalt, full of

ardent longing, be extinguished and die. I feel in me the close of thy
activity, I taste heavenly freedom, and happy restoration. With wild
pangs I recognize thy distance from our home, thy feud with the ancient
lordly Heaven. Thy rage and thy raving are in vain. Inconsumable
stands the cross, victory-flag of our race.
Over I pilgrim
Where every pain
Zest only of pleasure
Shall one
day remain.
Yet a few moments
Then free am I,
And intoxicated

In Love's lap lie.
Life everlasting
Lifts, wave-like, at me:
I gaze
from its summit
Down after thee.
Oh Sun, thou must vanish
Yon
hillock beneath;
A shadow will bring thee
Thy cooling wreath.

Oh draw at my heart, love,
Draw till I'm gone;
That, fallen asleep, I

Still may love on!
I feel the flow of
Death's youth-giving flood;

To balsam and aether, it
Changes my blood!
I live all the daytime

In faith and in might:
In holy rapture
I die every night.
V.
In ancient times an iron Fate lorded it, with dumb force, over the
widespread families of men. A gloomy oppression swathed their
anxious souls: the Earth was boundless, the abode of the gods and