The Works of Lord Byron Volume IV Part 4

Compare, too, _The Dream_, line 166, _vide post_, p. 39--

"What business had they there at such a time?"]

[27] {26}[Compare--

"He sighed, and turned his eyes, because he knew 'Twas but a larger jail he had in view."

Dryden, _Palamon and Arcite_, bk. i. lines 216, 217.

Compare, too--

"An exile---- Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong."

_Prophecy of Dante_, iv. 131, 132.]

[28] [Compare--

"The harvest of a quiet eye."

_A Poet's Epitaph_, line 51, _Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 116.]

[g]

_I saw them with their lake below,_ _And their three thousand years of snow_.--[MS.]

[29] [This, according to Ruskin's canon, may be a poetical inaccuracy.

The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.]

[30] [Villeneuve.]

[31] Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circ.u.mference.

It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.

[32] {27}[Compare--

"Of Silver How, and Grasmere's peaceful lake, And one green island."

_Works_ of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 220.]

[33] [Compare the Ancient Mariner on the water-snakes--

"O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare,"

_Ancient Mariner_, Part IV. lines 282, 283.

There is, too, in these lines (352-354), as in many others, an echo of Wordsworth. In the _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle_ it is told how the "two undying fish" of Bowscale Tarn, and the "eagle lord of land and sea" ministered to the shepherd-lord. It was no wonder that the critics of 1816 animadverted on Byron's "communion" with the Lakers. "He could not," writes a Critical Reviewer (Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581), "carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few, we will venture to predict, are found the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr.

Wordsworth.... Such is the effect of reading and enjoying the poetry of Mr. W., to whose system (ridiculed alike by those who could not, and who would not understand it) Lord Byron, it is evident, has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgment."]

[34] {28}[Compare the well-known lines in Lovelace's "To Althea--From Prison"--

"Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."]

[h] Here follows in the MS.--

_Nor stew I of my subjects one_-- / _hath so little_ _What sovereign_ <> _done?_ _yet so much hath_ /

POEMS OF

JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1816.

THE DREAM.

INTRODUCTION TO _THE DREAM_

_The Dream_, which was written at Diodati in July, 1816 (probably towards the end of the month; see letters to Murray and Rogers, dated July 22 and July 29), is a retrospect and an apology. It consists of an opening stanza, or section, on the psychology of dreams, followed by some episodes or dissolving views, which purport to be the successive stages of a dream. Stanzas ii. and iii. are descriptive of Annesley Park and Hall, and detail two incidents of Byron's boyish pa.s.sion for his neighbour and distant cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth. The first scene takes place on the top of "Diadem Hill," the "cape" or rounded spur of the long ridge of Howatt Hill, which lies about half a mile to the south-east of the hall. The time is the late summer or early autumn of 1803. The "Sun of Love" has not yet declined, and the "one beloved face"

is still shining on him; but he is beginning to realize that "her sighs are not for him," that she is out of his reach. The second scene, which belongs to the following year, 1804, is laid in the "antique oratory"

(not, as Moore explains, another name for the hall, but "a small room built over the porch, or princ.i.p.al entrance of the hall, and looking into the courtyard"), and depicts the final parting. His doom has been p.r.o.nounced, and his first impulse is to pen some pa.s.sionate reproach, but his heart fails him at the sight of the "Lady of his Love," serene and smiling, and he bids her farewell with smiles on his lips, but grief unutterable in his heart.

Stanza iv. recalls an incident of his Eastern travels--a halt at noonday by a fountain on the route from Smyrna to Ephesus (March 14, 1810), "the heads of camels were seen peeping above the tall reeds" (see _Travels in Albania_, 1858, ii. 59.).

The next episode (stanza v.) depicts an imaginary scene, suggested, perhaps, by some rumour or more definite a.s.surance, and often present to his "inward eye"--the "one beloved," the mother of a happy family, but herself a forsaken and unhappy wife.

He pa.s.ses on (stanza vi.) to his marriage in 1815, his bride "gentle"

and "fair," but _not_ the "one beloved,"--to the wedding day, when he stood before an altar, "like one forlorn," confused by the sudden vision of the past fulfilled with Love the "indestructible"!

In stanza vii. he records and a.n.a.lyzes the "sickness of the soul," the so-called "phrenzy" which had overtaken and changed the "Lady of his Love;" and, finally (stanza viii.), he lays bare the desolation of his heart, depicting himself as at enmity with mankind, but submissive to Nature, the "Spirit of the Universe," if, haply, there may be "reserved a blessing" even for him, the rejected and the outlaw.

Moore says (_Life_, p. 321) that _The Dream_ cost its author "many a tear in writing"--being, indeed, the most mournful as well as picturesque "story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and heart of man. In his _Real Lord Byron_ (i. 284) Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson maintains that _The Dream_ "has no autobiographical value.... A dream it was, as false as dreams usually are." The character of the poet, as well as the poem itself, suggests another criticism. Byron suffered or enjoyed vivid dreams, and, as poets will, shaped his dreams, consciously and of set purpose, to the furtherance of his art, but nothing concerning himself interested him or awoke the slumbering chord which was not based on actual fact. If the meeting on the "cape crowned with a peculiar diadem," and the final interview in the "antique oratory" had never happened or happened otherwise; if he had not "quivered" during the wedding service at Seaham; if a vision of Annesley and Mary Chaworth had not flashed into his soul,--he would have taken no pleasure in devising these incidents and details, and weaving them into a fict.i.tious narrative. He took himself too seriously to invent and dwell lovingly on the acts and sufferings of an imaginary Byron. The Dream is "picturesque" because the accidents of the scenes are dealt with not historically, but artistically, are omitted or supplied according to poetical licence; but the record is neither false, nor imaginary, nor unusual. On the other hand, the composition and publication of the poem must be set down, if not to malice and revenge, at least to the preoccupancy of chagrin and remorse, which compelled him to take the world into his confidence, cost what it might to his own self-respect, or the peace of mind and happiness of others.

For an elaborate description of Annesley Hall and Park, written with a view to ill.u.s.trate _The Dream_, see "A Byronian Ramble," Part II., the _Athenaeum_, August 30, 1834. See, too, an interesting quotation from Sir Richard Phillips' unfinished _Personal Tour through the United Kingdom_, published in the _Mirror_, 1828, vol. xii. p. 286; _Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey_, by Washington Irving, 1835, p. 191, _seq._; _The House and Grave of Byron_, 1855; and an article in _Lippincott's Magazine_, 1876, vol. xviii. pp. 637, _seq._

THE DREAM

I.

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 developement have breath, 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;[35] they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, 10 And look like heralds of Eternity; They pa.s.s 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, And shake us with the vision that's gone by,[36]

The dread of vanished shadows--Are they so?