WERTER'S WARNING. I then sink into a deep reverie, and cannot help saying:- ' Were Albert to die, Charlotte and I would LETTER 60. THE night was cool and tranquil. I was walking the palace-roof of home; and, as I mused on the close of the year and the swiftness of time, I saw in the southern sky a bright circlet of stars, resembling the Pleiades so arranged. At this image of magic beauty I gazed in delightful wonder, but my wonder soon became astonishment; for the starry circlet, with a strange whirling motion, rapidly drew nigh, and tempestuously dispersed around me in snow-flakes of fire, soft, chill, transparent. With these descending gems of heaven music sweetly and mournfully mingled, and the voice of an unseen Being arrested my ear: "Werter! ONE WARNING MORE, and we part, part forever." WERTER. Part, O invisible spirit! We have but this moment met, and do you speak of our parting? Say, what mysterious Being addresses me? GENIUS. And are we strangers? Twelve months have we been companions, although we are never to meet again. You ought by this time to know the Genius of the Departing Year. WERTER. Do we then separate forever? It is a mournful voice, which says forever.' It is mournful, we hear it said, eternally to part even with an enemy; but in bidding you farewell, Genius of the Year, a more tender emotion swells within me. My treatment of you, I acknowledge, has not been according to your merit, though I have ever been your friend at heart; but for your assiduities to me, Old Year, I am doubly grateful. You have lifted to my view a glimpse of joys, hard to be imagined and seldom realized, — a transient, moonlight glimpse of other worlds: "For all I see around me wears The hue of other spheres ; And something blent of smiles and tears GENIUS. A favoured mortal you have been, and you well know the worth of such favours. Few can value But has not your lot been like the general stars of beauty beaming amid skies of them aright. lot of man, gloom? WERTER. Not free from darkness and the shadow of death. O no, anguish has at times crushed me to the earth; but still so brilliant have been the star-beams conferred, I am full of gratitude. At this moment I better than ever appreciate both their worth and the kindness of their bestower. GENIUS. A grateful heart can never be unrewarded: the feeling itself is richer than every other recompense. WERTER. I feel it in bidding you adieu,—an adieu I may never bid another. This feeble, agitated frame, ere your successor shall follow you, may moulder in the dust. GENIUS. It may be so what is there permanent here? But why anticipate melancholy contingences alone? You see that cloud above the eastern horizon, frowning in its folds of obscurity? Beams of bliss may dwell behind that frown of blackness, the fruition of those very joys, though in a different form, which you say I have lifted before you. Ever hope for the accomplishment of your best wishes, and that hope will be worth half their completion. But remember, child of sentiment and passion, that all the events of life, whether they appear in the form of calamity or of the fairest fortune, are meant for your trial. Have you received them as such? You have been tried in the fire. Have you, like pure gold, come forth even brighter from the furnace? Or like debased coin, has your alloy been made only the more manifest? BEWARE OF CHERISHING FORBIDDEN HOPES AND WISHES. Be neither unjust to your friends, nor distrustful of Providence. WERTER. I am not unresigned. Though often I could have lain down, " careless of the voice of the morning,' yet my soul has invariably trusted in God. Even now a voice is inviting me away. All most dear to me is gone. Should I not exchange this stormy clime for a region of unclouded serenity? Would not God and good angels welcome me home? Would not departed friends hail my coming? And will not my endeared, my ever endeared Charlotte, soon be my own sister-spirit there? GENIUS. Your Charlotte!-Allow me, Werter, to use great plainness of speech, the unflattering truth of a dying friend. I cannot approve either your text or your doctrine. I pity your delusion. Have you trusted in God, can you for a moment cherish a persuasion so wild, when you have been undermining his holy institutions? Because you love the wife of another, and have more than half alienated her affections, you expect to be welcomed to the home of the pure in heart! Your Charlotte! In the name of heaven, who is your Charlotte ? Oh only the wife of a very worthy friend of yours! Something may be said, perhaps, in justification of your attachment to Charlotte, during the first months of your acquaintance, though even then it was weakness and infatuation to love a lady, who informed you the very evening you first met, that she was engaged to another; but how can you justify your passion after her marriage? You speak of death, too, and of Charlotte's following you to Heaven! Her husband, I suspect, would not thank either you or her for any suggestion of that sort. A treacherous friend and a falsehearted wife, however congenial they may be on earth, do not appear to be exactly prepared to meet in the blessedness of immortality. Death, I admit, the death of the righteous, is a blessing; but you are revolving within you, I perceive, something extremely different, and yet the same. Confess the truth: you are not thinking of your own death, but the death of the man you have been endeavouring to supplant, your friend Albert. Were Albert to die,' you are dreaming,Charlotte and I would' would be mar ried? Is this the selfishness of sentiment that enwraps you? No wonder you are ashamed to express it in words. WERTER. It is but too true. You have read my inmost emotion. GENIUS. I thought so. I thought so. Now look yonder: more remains to be read. Direct your eye toward the southern heaven, and you shall yourself view your most secret reveries in the motions of the stars. Do you see that star of diminutive lustre ? WERTER. I see it move, very swiftly move. It descends; it has disappeared beyond the woods, where the mountain stream sparkles in brightness, and whence the sound is wafted on the wind. GENIUS. How willingly, in the same manner, would you see the dim star of Albert go down! And what see you in the east? WERTER. I see another of peculiar attributes emerging from the cloud. GENIUS. Of more fiery beams, and moving forward with a wild comet-like aspect. It looks like flame. WERTER. It has coursed almost half the firmament. My God, what miracle do I behold! A lovely circlet of stars, resembling that beautiful cluster of seven, which I saw on your approach, is dimly visible in the south. GENIUS. Vapours partially obscure it. WERTER. The cluster and the flame-star from the east are now meeting. Their lustre revives in beauty. They are now met and embodied. Heaven of views! O Genius, who may paint the more than magic brilliancy of that embodied cluster! How it smiles from its path in heaven! GENIUS. Like the union of Werter, Charlotte, and family, is it not so ?-And see you nothing more? WERTER. I see many wonderful stars, many combinations, and many movements; but who can gaze on lesser glories, when that superior embodied constellation slowly moves on its way? O friendly genius, I forgive your severity. On a sight like this I could gaze unceasing. - GENIUS. I repeat my warning: BEWARE OF FORBIDDEN WISHES. On that bewildering vision, I charge you, gaze not in admiration and love. It is madness and crime. Gaze upon the cluster no more. WERTER. I cannot choose but gaze; for see, like the gentle lapse of age, it gradually descends. It approaches the wood-tops; it glows with augmented splendour; it illuminates the whole western horizon; it sinks; a luminous edge trembles,... is gone; but its pathway of glory is yet visible. GENIUS. You muse upon this "busy motion in the heavens;" you dwell upon these visionary picturings of your spirit; and you languish for their realization. But, O Werter, beware! I am forbidden to unveil the secrets of futurity; still this, what your own conscience has already spoken to you in thunder, this I am allowed to speak: BEWARE OF THE ILLUSIONS OF THE HEART, THE ILLUSIONS OF UNPERMITTED HOPE, FOR THEY END IN MISERY AND DEATH. This is my last warning; and now farewell forever. - To these solemn words I listened with almost breathless eagerness; and while I listened to them, as to the voice of prophecy, the form and features of the genius became visible in the clear starlight. A thoughtful sadness rested on his brow. A tear was on his cheek. He smiled upon me, and, like a meteor of the sky, faded away in silence. At the same instant another form approached, his gestures wild, his features half ecstasy and half distraction, his garments bathed in blood. On this terrific vision I gazed a moment with the intenseness of frenzy; but who can express my horrour, when I beheld in the form a resemblance of MYSELF! As if blasted by a lightningstroke, I fell prostrate on the house-top, and remained there for hours insensible as the dead. Such was my WARNING, or Reverie of the closing Year. Shall I beware and live? Shall I pursue my career of infatuation, and perish? -O the heaven of that embodied cluster! Is it fatal to contemplate its loveliness? And equally fatal, in view of the madness that possesses me, is it to turn away from the contemplation.-O wretched, wretched destiny of man! "His strength fails him, when he most requires its support."I must depart. The wisdom of the warning Spirit I perceive |