Idyls and Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

O sad sweet Power, that in this waking dream
Which men call Life, stores up, and sets the Past
By Time's effacement weaken'd, not destroy'd,
Before the Present: thought to thought recurring:
All action moulded then to thought: all words,
All purposes!

We call'd not, but the ghosts
Are trooping round us: shadows, yet too true:
Unheedful, unremoving: real all
E'en in their unreality: unchanged
Where all else seems so changeful.

Yet thy sway
Is not all-powerful, Memory: there are realms
Where thine is but divided empery,
Where Reason yields to Slumber: snaps the thread:
No more links thought to thought: but lets them drop
Like pearls dischain'd, upon the dreaming mind,
That catches each impression as it falls
Impuissant to combine them. Dreams arise
And fade at light, nor interchange with dreams:
Vision of former vision ignorant
And sleep unconscious of the gifts that sleep
In other hours had brought us. Nor, they say,
Is there aught else so potent betwixt dream
And waking to distinguish: 'tis the mark,
This disconnexion, that parts off the true
From the unsubstantial.

116

And yet here Remembrance,
At her own time, puts forth a sudden sway,
And gives a seeming reason to th' unreal:
With fancied act inlacing fancied act,
Vision to vision calling—till in dreams
Thought dwells on former dreams, and knows them such,
Holding the Present real.

There was one
Our inmate late, and joyous playfellow:
A Child, whose own o'erflowing happiness
Made all around her sharers: strong to chase
The thoughtfulness of grief, with careless glee
And loving mirth: her image on our minds
Indelibly stamping.

—Ah, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, the visions of the night
Have oft recall'd thee to desiring eyes,
Desiring eyes and arms: and bid me think
That thou wert yet among us, till I waked,
And knew the sad deceit, that Fancy wrought
In that false restoration.

Once again
I dreamt that she was with me. 'Twas a hall
Throng'd with grave heads, and serious presences
Of aged study. Long the conclave sat,
Holding deep council—yet in vain—so seem'd it—
On what the State might purpose to effect
Of imminent change in Academic halls.
And I was there, unsummon'd: for I saw
My litttle fair one, anxious and alone:
One Child among deliberating chiefs,
One rose among the thistles.

In I rush'd
And drew her forth, 'mid startled looks, and words
Where scorn with wonder mingled.

But alone
With little Margaret, I clasp'd her fast,
And said ‘The day was fix'd: the hour has come,
Dearest, that thou once more shouldst be with us:
'Tis strange, but late I thought so: 'twas a dream:
'Twas but a dream: no more: I know it such:
But we are waking now: the hour has come:
Come thou too, dearest.’

117

—And around my neck
Her little arms she flung: then on my lips
Press'd treasured soft caresses: more than oft
Regardless Childhood lavishes: sure proof,
Sweet, undesign'd, of love that knew no stint,
No looking back, or forward: the pure love
Of self-unconscious confidence.—

—Ah, dear one,
Why should I wake, and know it but a dream,
A dream that dream'd of dreams:—and find thee not,
Save in the haunts of daylight recollection,
Mine own—and not mine own?