15. CHAPTER XV.
Dreams! dreams! golden dreams: endless, and golden, as
the flowery prairies, that stretch away from the Rio Sacramento,
in whose waters Danae's shower was woven;—prairies
like rounded eternities: jonquil leaves beaten out; and
my dreams herd like buffaloes, browsing on to the horizon, and
browsing on round the world; and among them, I dash
with my lance, to spear one, ere they all flee.
Dreams! dreams! passing and repassing, like Oriental
empires in history; and scepters wave thick, as Bruce's
pikes at Bannockburn; and crowns are plenty as marigolds
in June. And far in the background, hazy and blue, their
steeps let down from the sky, loom Andes on Andes, rooted
on Alps; and all round me, long rushing oceans, roll Amazons
and Oronocos; waves, mounted Parthians; and, to and
fro, toss the wide woodlands: all the world an elk, and the
forests its antlers.
But far to the South, past my Sicily suns and my vineyards,
stretches the Antarctic barrier of ice: a China wall,
built up from the sea, and nodding its frosted towers in the
dun, clouded sky. Do Tartary and Siberia lie beyond?
Deathful, desolate dominions those; bleak and wild the
ocean, beating at that barrier's base, hovering 'twixt freezing
and foaming; and freighted with navies of ice-bergs,—
warring worlds crossing orbits; their long icicles, projecting
like spears to the charge. Wide away stream the floes of
drift ice, frozen cemeteries of skeletons and bones. White
bears howl as they drift from their cubs; and the grinding
islands crush the skulls of the peering seals.
But beneath me, at the Equator, the earth pulses and
beats like a warrior's heart; till I know not, whether it be
not myself. And my soul sinks down to the depths, and
soars to the skies; and comet-like reels on through such
boundless expanses, that methinks all the worlds are my
kin, and I invoke them to stay in their course. Yet, like a
mighty three-decker, towing argosies by scores, I tremble,
gasp, and strain in my flight, and fain would cast off the
cables that hamper.
And like a frigate, I am full with a thousand souls; and
as on, on, on, I scud before the wind, many mariners rush
up from the orlop below, like miners from caves; running
shouting across my decks; opposite braces are pulled; and
this way and that, the great yards swing round on their
axes; and boisterous speaking-trumpets are heard; and
contending orders, to save the good ship from the shoals.
Shoals, like nebulous vapors, shoreing the white reef of the
Milky Way, against which the wrecked worlds are dashed;
strowing all the strand, with their Himmaleh keels and ribs.
Ay: many, many souls are in me. In my tropical calms,
when my ship lies tranced on Eternity's main, speaking one
at a time, then all with one voice: an orchestra of many
French bugles and horns, rising, and falling, and swaying,
in golden calls and responses.
Sometimes, when these Atlantics and Pacifics thus undulate
round me, I lie stretched out in their midst: a land-locked
Mediterranean, knowing no ebb, nor flow. Then
again, I am dashed in the spray of these sounds: an eagle at
the world's end, tossed skyward, on the horns of the tempest.
Yet, again, I descend, and list to the concert.
Like a grand, ground swell, Homer's old organ rolls its
vast volumes under the light frothy wave-crests of Anacreon
and Hafiz; and high over my ocean, sweet Shakespeare
soars, like all the larks of the spring. Throned on my seaside,
like Canute, bearded Ossian smites his hoar harp,
wreathed with wild-flowers, in which warble my Wallers;
blind Milton sings bass to my Petrarchs and Priors, and
laureats crown me with bays.
In me, many worthies recline, and converse. I list to
St. Paul who argues the doubts of Montaigne; Julian the
Apostate cross-questions Augustine; and Thomas-a-Kempis
unrolls his old black letters for all to decipher. Zeno murmurs
maxims beneath the hoarse shout of Democritus; and
though Democritus laugh loud and long, and the sneer of
Pyrrho be seen; yet, divine Plato, and Proclus, and Verulam
are of my counsel; and Zoroaster whispered me before
I was born. I walk a world that is mine; and enter
many nations, as Mungo Park rested in African cots; I am
served like Bajazet: Bacchus my butler, Virgil my minstrel,
Philip Sidney my page. My memory is a life beyond birth;
my memory, my library of the Vatican, its alcoves all endless
perspectives, eve-tinted by cross-lights from Middle-Age
oriels.
And as the great Mississippi musters his watery nations:
Ohio, with all his leagued streams; Missouri, bringing down
in torrents the clans from the highlands; Arkansas, his
Tartar rivers from the plain;—so, with all the past and
present pouring in me, I roll down my billow from afar.
Yet not I, but another: God is my Lord; and though
many satellites revolve around me, I and all mine revolve
round the great central Truth, sun-like, fixed and luminous
forever in the foundationless firmament.
Fire flames on my tongue; and though of old the Bactrian
prophets were stoned, yet the stoners in oblivion sleep.
But whoso stones me, shall be as Erostratus, who put torch
to the temple; though Genghis Khan with Cambyses combine
to obliterate him, his name shall be extant in the mouth
of the last man that lives. And if so be, down unto death,
whence I came, will I go, like Xenophon retreating on
Greece, all Persia brandishing her spears in his rear.
My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the
scratch of my pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me;
fain would I unsay this audacity; but an iron-mailed hand
clenches mine in a vice, and prints down every letter in
my spite. Fain would I hurl off this Dionysius that rides
me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields
I hear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in
this cell. The fever runs through me like lava; my hot
brain burns like a coal; and like many a monarch, I am less
to be envied, than the veriest hind in the land.
