BOOK VI.
CONTENTS.
Enoch Wray versifies his Dream—His Anxiety to recite his Composition
to his Neighbour, Alice Green—Snow-storm.
I.
Dreams! are ye vapours of the heated brain,
Or echoes of our deeds, our fears, our hopes?
Fever'd remembrances, that o'er again
Tell prose adventures, in poetic tropes,
While drowsy judgment with illusion copes
Feebly and vainly? Are ye paid when due?
Or, like our cobweb wealth, unfound when sought?
Be ye of stirling value, weigh'd and true,
Or the mere paper currency of thought,
By spendthrift fancy sign'd, and good for nought—
Enoch hath dream'd a dream, like saddest truth,
And done it into rhyme. And Alice Green—
The shrewish village quack, and ever sooth
Interpreter of dreams—can tell, I ween,
What signs and omens, rhymed or rhymeless mean.
With all a poet's ardour to rehearse
A vision, like the Florentine's of yore,
Feverish and nervous, muttering deathless verse,
He opens oft, and oft he shuts the door,
And every leaden minute seems a score.
But he is storm-bound. To the marsh below,
While squattering ducks decend, and, with pale beams,
The hooded, ineffectual sun, through snow
That fell all night, and still is falling, gleams,
Like reason, struggling half awake, in dreams,
He hears the redbreast peck the frosted pane,
Asking admittance to the warm fireside;
And—while o'er muffled ruts each cart and wain
Moves without sound—he opes the casement wide,
To hail once more the guest he ne'er denied;
Then spreads his hands, to feel if yet the plumes
Of heav'n are wavering in the noiseless air;
Determined—when the burden'd sky resumes
Its lucid azure, clear, and cold, and fair—
Through paths of hidden peril to repair,
And have some harmless fun with Alice Green.
How wild, how wondrous, and how changed the scene
Since yesterday! On hill and valley bright
Then look'd broad heav'n, all splendid and serene;
And earth and sky were beauty, music, light.
But now the storm-cock shakes the powdery white,
With start impatient, from his shivering wings;
And, on the maple's loaded bough depress'd,
Perch'd o'er the buried daisy sweetly sings,
With modulated throat and speckled breast,
To cheer the hen bird, drooping in the nest
On dusky eggs, with many a dot and streak.
II.
Love of the celandine and primrose meek!
Star of the leafless hazel! where art thou?
Where is the windflower, with its modest cheek?
Larch! hast thou dash'd from thy denuded brow
Blossoms, that stole their rose-hues from the glow
Of Even, blushing into dreams of love?
Flowers of the wintry beam and faithless sky!
Gems of the wither'd bank and shadeless grove!
Ye are where he who mourns you soon must lie;
Beneath the shroud ye slumber, tranquilly;
But not for ever. Yet a sudden hour
Shall thaw the spotless mantle of your sleep,
And bid it, melted into thunder, pour
From mountain, waste, and fell, with foamy sweep,
Whelming the flooded plain in ruin deep.
Yes, little silent minstrels of the wild,
Your voiceless song shall touch the heart again!
And shall no morning dawn on Sorrow's child?
Shall buried mind for ever mute remain
Beneath the sod, from which your beauteous strain
Shall yet arise in music, felt, not heard?
No! Faith, Hope, Love, Fear, Gladness, Frailty, all,
Forbid that man should perish. Like the bird
That soars and sings in Nature's festival,
Our souls shall rise—and fear no second fall—
Our adoration strike a lyre divine!
III.
Now, through the clearing storm, the sunbeams shine;
And, lo! the fluttering flakes are winnow'd fire!
Thinner and thinner fall the fleeces fine;
From mantled fells the umber'd clouds retire;
And heav'n, that stoop'd to earth, is lifted higher.
How Nature dazzles in her bridal vest!
Like air-blown fire on fire is light on snow.
A long-lost feeling wakes in Enoch's breast;
His sightless eye-balls feel a sapphire glow,
That speaks of hues and forms dead long ago—
The bright, the wild, the beautiful, the grand!
