Life and death are to Novalis only "relative ideas." The dead are half alive, the living half dead. It is this thought which in his case first gives zest to existence. In the first of his Hymns to Night he writes: "I turn to thee, holy, ineffable, mysterious Night! Far off lies the world, as if it had sunk into a deep grave; deserted and lonely is its place. My heart-strings vibrate with sorrow.... Dost thou find pleasure in us as we in thee, dark Night?... Costly balsam drips from thy hand, from thy poppy-sheaf. Thou unfoldest the heavy wings of the soul.... How poor, how childish seems the day, how joyful and blessed its departing!... More heavenly than those sparkling stars are the myriad eyes which Night opens in us. They see farther than the palest of those countless hosts; without the aid of light, they see into the depths of a loving soul, and its high places are filled with unspeakable rapture. Praised be the Queen of the earth, the august revealer of holy worlds, the guardian of blessed love! She sends me thee, my beloved, sweet sun of the night. Now I wake, for I am thine and mine. Thou hast proclaimed to me the life-giving gospel of Night, hast made of me a human being. Consume my body with the glowing flame of the spirit, that I may mingle yet more ethereally, yet more closely with thee, and the bridal-night be eternal." One feels the feverish desire of the consumptive in this outburst. The parallel passage in _Lucinde_ is: "O infinite longing! But a time is coming when the fruitless desire and vain delusions of the day will die away and disappear, and the great night of love bring eternal peace." The thoughts of these two Romantic lovers of the night meet in this idea of an eternal embrace. In this enthusiasm for night lies the germ of religious mysticism. In the case of Justinus Kerner (which recalls that of Jung Stilling), bias towards the mysterious becomes belief in apparitions and fear of spirits. In certain of the writings of the later Romanticists, for instance in Achim von Arnim's _Die schöne Isabella von Ægypten_, half the characters are spirits. Mysticism is a fundamental element in the art of Clemens Brentano, even when he is at his best, and it gives charm and colour to his descriptions. Novalis himself describes mysticism as voluptuousness--"ein wollüstiges Wesen." To understand this expression aright, we must study his hymns:-- "Hinüber wall' ich Und jede Pein Wird einst ein Stachel Der Wollust sein. Noch wenig Zeiten So bin ich los, Und liege trunken Der Lieb' im Schoss."[4]