Hyperion Author:Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IIL HOMUN'CFLUS. A FTER all, a journey up the Rhine, in the mists anJ -£j- solitude of December, is not so unpleasant as the reader may perhaps ima... more »gine. You have the whole road and river to yourself. Nobody is on the wing ; hardly a single traveller. The ruins are the same ; and the river, and the outlines of the hills; and there are few living figures in the landscape to wake you from your musings, distract your thoughts, and cover you with dust. Thus likewise thought our traveller, as he continued his journey on the morrow. The day is overcast and the clouds threaten rain or snow. Why does he stop at the little village of Capellen ? Because, right above him on the high cliff, the glorious ruin of Stolzenfels is looking at him with its hollow eyes, and beckoning to him with its gigantic finger, as if to say, " Come up hither, and I will tell thee an old tale." Therefore he alights, and goes up the narrow village lane, and up the stone steps, and up the steep pathway, and throws himself into the arms of that ancient ruin, and holds his breath, to hear the quick footsteps of the falling snow, like the footsteps of angels descending upon earth. And that ancient ruin speaks to him with its hollow voice, and says :— " Beware of dreams ! Beware of the illusions of fancy ! Beware of the solemn deceivings of thy vast desires ! Beneath me flows the Rhine, and, like the stream ofTime, it flows amid the ruins of the Past. I see myself therein, and I know that I am old. Thou, too, shalt be old. Bo wise in season. Like the stream of thy life runs the stream beneath us. Down from the distant Alps,—out into the wide world, it bursts away, like a youth from the house of his fathers. Broad-breasted and strong, and with earnest endeavors, like manhood, it makes itself a way thr...« less