| |
| OUR life is twofold; sleep hath its own world, | |
| A boundary between the things misnamed | |
| Death and existence: sleep hath its own world, | |
| And a wide realm of wild reality, | |
| And dreams in their development have breath, | 5 |
| And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; | |
| They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, | |
| They take a weight from off our waking toils, | |
| They do divide our being; they become | |
| A portion of ourselves as of our time, | 10 |
| And look like heralds of eternity; | |
| They pass like spirits of the past,—they speak | |
| Like sibyls of the future; they have power,— | |
| The tyranny of pleasure and of pain; | |
| They make us what we were not,—what they will, | 15 |
| And shake us with the vision that ’s gone by, | |
| The dread of vanished shadows.—Are they so? | |
| Is not the past all shadow? What are they? | |
| Creations of the mind?—The mind can make | |
| Substances, and people planets of its own | 20 |
| With beings brighter than have been, and give | |
| A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. | |
| I would recall a vision which I dreamed | |
| Perchance in sleep,—for in itself a thought, | |
| A slumbering thought, is capable of years, | 25 |
| And curdles a long life into one hour. | |
| |
| I saw two beings in the hues of youth | |
| Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, | |
| Green and of a mild declivity, the last | |
| As ’t were the cape of a long ridge of such, | 30 |
| Save that there was no sea to lave its base, | |
| But a most living landscape, and the wave | |
| Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men | |
| Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke | |
| Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill | 35 |
| Was crowned with a peculiar diadem | |
| Of trees, in circular array, so fixed, | |
| Not by the sport of nature, but of man: | |
| These two, a maiden and a youth, were there | |
| Gazing,—the one on all that was beneath | 40 |
| Fair as herself,—but the boy gazed on her; | |
| And both were young, and one was beautiful; | |
| And both were young,—yet not alike in youth. | |
| As the sweet moon on the horizon’s verge, | |
| The maid was on the eve of womanhood; | 45 |
| The boy had fewer summers, but his heart | |
| Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye | |
| There was but one belovèd face on earth, | |
| And that was shining on him; he had looked | |
| Upon it till it could not pass away; | 50 |
| He had no breath, no being, but in hers; | |
| She was his voice; he did not speak to her, | |
| But trembled on her words; she was his sight, | |
| For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers, | |
| Which colored all his objects;—he had ceased | 55 |
| To live with himself: she was his life, | |
| The ocean to the river of his thoughts, | |
| Which terminated all; upon a tone, | |
| A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, | |
| And his cheek change tempestuously;—his heart | 60 |
| Unknowing of its cause of agony. | |
| But she in these fond feelings had no share: | |
| Her sighs were not for him; to her he was | |
| Even as a brother,—but no more; ’t was much, | |
| For brotherless she was, save in the name | 65 |
| Her infant friendship had bestowed on him; | |
| Herself the solitary scion left | |
| Of a time-honored race. It was a name | |
| Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not,—and why? | |
| Time taught him a deep answer—when she loved | 70 |
| Another; even now she loved another, | |
| And on the summit of the hill she stood, | |
| Looking afar if yet her lover’s steed | |
| Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew. | |
| |
| A change came o’er the spirit of my dream. | 75 |
| There was an ancient mansion, and before | |
| Its walls there was a steed caparisoned; | |
| Within an antique oratory stood | |
| The boy of whom I spake;—he was alone, | |
| And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon | 80 |
| He sate him down, and seized a pen and traced | |
| Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned | |
| His bowed head on his hands and shook, as ’t were | |
| With a convulsion,—then arose again, | |
| And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear | 85 |
| What he had written, but he shed no tears, | |
| And he did calm himself, and fix his brow | |
| Into a kind of quiet; as he paused, | |
| The lady of his love re-entered there; | |
| She was serene and smiling then, and yet | 90 |
| She knew she was by him beloved; she knew— | |
| For quickly comes such knowledge—that his heart | |
| Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw | |
| That he was wretched, but she saw not all. | |
| He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp | 95 |
| He took her hand; a moment o’er his face | |
| A tablet of unutterable thoughts | |
| Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; | |
| He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps | |
| Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, | 100 |
| For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed | |
| From out the massy gate of that old Hall, | |
| And mounting on his steed he went his way; | |
| And ne’er repassed that hoary threshold more. | |
| |
| A change came o’er the spirit of my dream. | 105 |
| The boy was sprung to manhood; in the wilds | |
| Of fiery climes he made himself a home, | |
| And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt | |
| With strange and dusky aspects; he was not | |
| Himself like what he had been; on the sea | 110 |
| And on the shore he was a wanderer; | |
| There was a mass of many images | |
| Crowded like waves upon me, but he was | |
| A part of all; and in the last he lay | |
| Reposing from the noontide sultriness, | 115 |
| Couched among fallen columns, in the shade | |
| Of ruined walls that had survived the names | |
| Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side | |
| Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds | |
| Were fastened near a fountain; and a man, | 120 |
| Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while, | |
| While many of his tribe slumbered around: | |
| And they were canopied by the blue sky, | |
| So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, | |
| That God alone was to be seen in heaven. | 125 |
| |
| A change came o’er the spirit of my dream. | |
| The lady of his love was wed with one | |
| Who did not love her better: in her home, | |
| A thousand leagues from his,—her native home, | |
| She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, | 130 |
| Daughters and sons of beauty,—but behold! | |
| Upon her face there was the tint of grief, | |
| The settled shadow of an inward strife, | |
| And an unquiet drooping of the eye, | |
| As if its lids were charged with unshed tears. | 135 |
| What could her grief be?—she had all she loved, | |
| And he who had so loved her was not there | |
| To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, | |
| Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts. | |
| What could her grief be?—she had loved him not, | 140 |
| Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, | |
| Nor could he be a part of that which preyed | |
| Upon her mind—a spectre of the past. | |
| |
| A change came o’er the spirit of my dream. | |
| The wanderer was returned.—I saw him stand | 145 |
| Before an altar—with a gentle bride; | |
| Her face was fair, but was not that which made | |
| The starlight of his boyhood;—as he stood | |
| Even at the altar, o’er his brow there came | |
| The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock | 150 |
| That in the antique oratory shook | |
| His bosom in its solitude; and then— | |
| As in that hour—a moment o’er his face | |
| The tablet of unutterable thoughts | |
| Was traced,—and then it faded as it came, | 155 |
| And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke | |
| The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, | |
| And all things reeled around him; he could see | |
| Not that which was, nor that which should have been,— | |
| But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, | 160 |
| And the remembered chambers, and the place, | |
| The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, | |
| All things pertaining to that place and hour, | |
| And her who was his destiny, came back | |
| And thrust themselves between him and the light; | 165 |
| What business had they there at such a time? | |
| |
| A change came o’er the spirit of my dream. | |
| The lady of his love;—O, she was changed, | |
| As by the sickness of the soul! her mind | |
| Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, | 170 |
| They had not their own lustre, but the look | |
| Which is not of the earth; she was become | |
| The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts | |
| Were combinations of disjointed things, | |
| And forms impalpable and unperceived | 175 |
| Of others’ sight familiar were to hers. | |
| And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise | |
| Have a far deeper madness, and the glance | |
| Of melancholy is a fearful gift; | |
| What is it but the telescope of truth, | 180 |
| Which strips the distance of its fantasies, | |
| And brings life near in utter nakedness, | |
| Making the cold reality too real! | |
| |
| A change came o’er the spirit of my dream. | |
| The wanderer was alone as heretofore, | 185 |
| The beings which surrounded him were gone, | |
| Or were at war with him; he was a mark | |
| For blight and desolation, compassed round | |
| With hatred and contention; pain was mixed | |
| In all which was served up to him, until, | 190 |
| Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, | |
| He fed on poisons, and they had no power, | |
| But were a kind of nutriment; he lived | |
| Through that which had been death to many men, | |
| And made him friends of mountains: with the stars | 195 |
| And the quick Spirit of the universe | |
| He held his dialogues; and they did teach | |
| To him the magic of their mysteries; | |
| To him the book of Night was opened wide, | |
| And voices from the deep abyss revealed | 200 |
| A marvel and a secret.—Be it so. | |
| |
| My dream was past; it had no further change. | |
| It was of a strange order, that the doom | |
| Of these two creatures should be thus traced out | |
| Almost like a reality,—the one | 205 |
| To end in madness—both in misery. | |
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