We are Joy, we are Delight, the rapture of Love!” But longingly Anselmus turns his eyes to the Glorious Temple, which rises behind him in the distance.  The artful pillars seem trees; and the capitals and friezes acanthus leaves, which in wondrous wreaths and figures form splendid decorations.  Anselmus walks to the Temple; he views with inward delight the variegated marble, the steps with their strange veins of moss.  “Ah, no!” cries he, as if in the excess of rapture, “she is not far from me now; she is near!” Then advances Serpentina, in the fulness of beauty and grace, from the Temple; she bears the Golden Pot, from which a bright Lily has sprung.  The nameless rapture of infinite longing glows in her bright eyes; she looks at Anselmus, and says:  “Ah!  Dearest, the Lily has sent forth her bowl; what we longed for is fulfilled; is there a happiness to equal ours?” Anselmus clasps her with the tenderness of warmest ardor; the Lily burns in flaming beams over his head.  And louder move the trees and bushes; clearer and gladder play the brooks; the birds, the shining insects dance in the waves of perfume; a gay, bright rejoicing tumult, in the air, in the water, in the earth, is holding the festival of Love!  Now rush sparkling streaks, gleaming over all the bushes; diamonds look from the ground like shining eyes; high gushes spurt from the wells; strange perfumes are wafted hither on sounding wings; they are the Spirits of the Elements, who do homage to the Lily, and proclaim the happiness of Anselmus.  Then Anselmus raises his head, as if encircled with a beamy glory.  Is it looks?  Is it words?  Is it song?  You hear the sound:  “Serpentina!  Belief in thee, Love of thee, has unfolded to my soul the inmost spirit of Nature!  Thou hast brought me the Lily, which sprung from Gold, from the primeval Force of the earth, before Phosphorus had kindled the spark of Thought; this Lily is Knowledge of the sacred Harmony of all Beings; and in this do I live in highest blessedness forevermore.  Yes, I, thrice happy, have perceived what was highest; I must indeed love thee forever, O Serpentina!  Never shall the golden blossoms of the Lily grow pale; for, like Belief and Love, Knowledge is eternal.”

For the vision, in which I had now beheld Anselmus bodily, in his Freehold of Atlantis, I stand indebted to the arts of the Salamander; and most fortunate was it that, when all had melted into air, I found a paper lying on the violet table, with the foregoing statement of the matter, written fairly and distinctly by my own hand.  But now I felt myself as if transpierced and torn in pieces by sharp sorrow.  “Ah, happy Anselmus, who hast cast away the burden of week-day life, who in the love of thy kind Serpentina fliest with bold pinion, and now livest in rapture and joy on thy Freehold in Atlantis! while I—­poor I!—­must soon, nay, in a few moments, leave even this fair hall, which itself is far from a Freehold in Atlantis, and again be transplanted to my garret, where, enthralled among the pettinesses of necessitous existence, my heart and my sight are so bedimmed with thousand mischiefs, as with thick fog, that the fair Lily will never, never be beheld by me.”