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- shadows, an imperial guard, with slow pace and solemn, defiled along
the steeps; or, routed by pursuing light, fled broadcast from east to
west—old wars of Lucifer and Michael; or the mountains, though unvexed
by these mirrored sham fights in the sky, had an atmosphere otherwise
unfavorable for fairy views. I was sorry; the more so, because I had to
keep my chamber for some time after—which chamber did not face those
hills.
At length, when pretty well again, and sitting out, in the September
morning, upon the piazza, and thinking to myself, when, just after a
little flock of sheep, the farmer’s banded children passed, a-nutting,
and said, “How sweet a day”—it was, after all, but what their fathers
call a weather-breeder—and, indeed, was become so sensitive through my
illness, as that I could not bear to look upon a Chinese creeper of my
adoption, and which, to my delight, climbing a post of the piazza, had
burst out in starry bloom, but now, if you removed the leaves a little,
showed millions of strange, cankerous worms, which, feeding upon those
blossoms, so shared their blessed hue, as to make it unblessed
evermore—worms, whose germs had doubtless lurked in the very bulb
which, so hopefully, I had planted: in this ingrate peevishness of my
weary convalescence, was I sitting there; when, suddenly looking off, I
saw the golden mountain-window, dazzling like a deep-sea dolphin.
Fairies there, thought I, once more; the queen of fairies at her
fairy-window; at any rate, some glad mountain-girl; it will do me good,
it will cure this weariness, to look on her. No more; I’ll launch my
yawl—ho, cheerly, heart! and push away for fairy-land—for rainbow’s
end, in fairy-land.
How to get to fairy-land, by what road, I did not know; nor could any
one inform me; not even one Edmund Spenser, who had been there—so he
wrote me—further than that to reach fairy-land, it must be voyaged to,
and with faith. I took the fairy-mountain’s bearings, and the first
fine day, when strength permitted, got into my yawl—high-pommeled,
leather one—cast off the fast, and away I sailed, free voyager as an
autumn leaf. Early dawn; and, sallying westward, I sowed the morning
before me.
Some miles brought me nigh the hills; but out of present sight of them.
I was not lost; for road-side golden-rods, as guide-posts, pointed, I
doubted not, the way to the golden window. Following them, I came to a
lone and languid region, where the grass-grown ways were traveled but
by drowsy cattle, that, less waked than stirred by day, seemed to walk
in sleep. Browse, they did not—the enchanted never eat. At least, so
says Don Quixote, that sagest sage that ever lived.
On I went, and gained at last the fairy mountain’s base, but saw yet no
fairy ring. A pasture rose before me. Letting down five mouldering
bars—so moistly green, they seemed fished up from some sunken wreck—a
wigged old Aries, long-visaged, and with crumpled horn, came snuffing
up; and then, retreating, decorously led on along a milky-way of
white-weed, past dim-clustering Pleiades and Hyades, of small
forget-me-nots; and would have led me further still his astral path,
but for golden flights of yellow-birds—pilots, surely, to the golden
window, to one side flying before me, from bush to bush, towards deep
woods—which woods themselves were luring—and, somehow, lured, too, by
their fence, banning a dark road, which, however dark, led up. I pushed
through; when Aries, renouncing me now for some lost soul, wheeled, and
went his wiser way. Forbidding and forbidden ground—to him.
- title
- Chunk 5