Marah :: :: University of Virginia Library

I have dream'd a bad dream, and it harrows me still
With a horror of worse impending.
I was plodding, persistently plodding up hill,
And the hill was a hill never ending:

2

On, I toilfully went in tenacious pursuit
Of a something before me going:
But if human it was, or divine, or brute,
I had never a means of knowing:

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3

For I neither could touch it, nor hear it, nor see:
Yet I steadily strove to attain it,
Since I knew it was there, by a feeling in me
That sufficed, tho' I cannot explain it.

4

There was tree upon tree by the way that I went:
And each tree was a female Briareus,
With its feminine arms about me bent
In embraces vicious and various.

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As a path of his own does the pioneer cut,
Thro' the prairie his wild way clearing,
So did I cut mine thro' those arms, and shut,
As I struck at them, both eyes—fearing!

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6

But a shriek I heard as at each fresh stroke
Thro' a shatter'd embrace I hasten'd,
And was wet with the drip of the blood that broke
From the clasp that a wound unfasten'd.

7

And before I again look'd up I knew
That the thing I pursued had escaped me.
It was gone. And a different scene, quite new,
The bad dream I was dreaming shaped me.

8

For the hill to a plain had dissolved away,
And the plain had no mark, no limit,
But as far as my vision could reach it lay
(Not a shrub or a shadow to dim it!)

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9

In the sultry embrace of a Syrian noon:
And, along it confusedly streaming,
A profusion of emigrant prodigies soon
Rearranged the bad dream I was dreaming.

10

'Twas a monstrous procession. In front of it came
The sleek Basilisks, hissing and sighing:
In the forehead of each did a diamond flame,
And the Wyverns were after them flying.

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But below were the Dragons with three-prong'd feet,
And each Dragon was forty-footed,
And they furrow'd the plain with the flap and beat
Of their tails, and its sods uprooted.

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12

In a merrily gambolling company pass'd
The lithe Leopards, and Ounces, and Lynxes:
Then the Jaguars, Panthers, and Pumas: and last
Came the beautiful leonine Sphinxes.

13

In their somnolent motion they seem'd to repose:
Was it walking, or flying, or floating?
Not a sound from their paws as they pass'd me arose
The approach of their presence denoting;

14

Not a fold of their filleted tiars was stirr'd;
Not a pulse in their peak'd breasts flutter'd;
But as murmuring seas by a slumberer heard
Were the mystic enigmas they mutter'd.

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15

And their eyes were incessantly changing hue;
And each hue of them fitfully thrill'd me
With a different pang. When those eyes were blue,
'Twas a passionate longing that fill'd me;

16

When they alter'd to violet, from them came
Indescribable desolation;
But when red, 'twas a frenzy of burning flame;
And when black, it was life's cessation.

17

The blithe Centaurs cantering came with a bound,
And a rattle of arrowy quivers:
Then a troop of green Gryphons, golden-crown'd,
From the Arimaspian rivers.

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18

There were two-leggèd Dogs with the airs of gods;
And, escorting Cat-countenanced Creatures,
Supernatural Apes with divining rods
And fatidical sinister features:

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And a ponderous phalanx, serried and square,
Of the man-faced Bulls of Chaldea,
Whose bewildering bulks dread embodiments are
Of the strength of a dread Idea.

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From the back of each Bull rose four vast wings
In a feather'd pavilion arching;
And they all had the faces of bearded kings;
And their steps were as mountains marching.

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21

But above the grim multitudes trooping in herds
Thro' the Syrian sultriness glitter'd
A tumultuous pageant of strange-colour'd birds,
And they hooted, and whistled, and twitter'd.

22

Clad in crimson, and orange, and azure, and green,
There were Peacocks, and Parrots, and Loories,
And Flamingoes, and Hoopoes, and Fowls obscene
With the eyeballs and talons of Furies.

23

And the Hawk and the Ibis were carrying, both,
Babylonian rolls of papyrus;
And the scripture thereon was the sentence of Thoth
On the souls of Belshazzar and Cyrus.

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24

In the rear of the Birds with a wavering flight
Came a flock of Chimæras meagre,
And a squadron of blue-wing'd Serpents bright,
With their forkt tongues flickering eager.

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But the Phœnix it was that commanded the whole,
As its high priest, herald, and warder.
In his beak he was bearing a fiery coal,
And it burn'd with unquenchable ardour:

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As a fiery coal had he made it to be,
But I knew 'twas my own heart burning:
For I felt the hot flame of it withering me
With the heat of an agonised yearning.

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27

And I cried to them, “What are you going to do
With my heart, all you prodigies bestial;
For what sacrifice fierce have you kindled it so
With infernal fire? Or celestial?”

28

In exorbitant wrath, when I cried to them this,
They responded aloud and together,
With an uproar as tho' from the riven Abyss
'Twere Leviathan rending his tether.

29

In fuliginous films the disquieted sand
Flew about, and above, and beclouded
The insatiable sun; and the shuddering land
In a blood-red pall was enshrouded.

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30

For the Bulls of Chaldea resentfully stamp'd
In a bellowing band: and up bounded
The roused Panthers and Pumas: the Jaguars ramp'd:
And the bows of the Centaurs resounded,

31

As their darts flew about in the blood-colour'd gloom:
Into rings where the Dragons contorted:
In the eyes of the leonine Sphinxes was doom:
The Chimæras all whinnied and snorted:

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And the green Gryphons yelp'd: and, like murderous priests,
In pursuit of me fast, as I fled them,
Came the two-leggèd Dogs and Cat-countenanced Beasts,
With the Ape-headed Horrors that led them:

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And the Birds and the Basilisks madden'd the air
With a horrible screeching and hissing:
Till at last I awoke with a clutch of despair
At my heart. But too late! It was missing.