The Dream by Lord Byron

Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,A boundary between the things misnamedDeath 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; they becomeA portion of ourselves as of our time,And look like heralds of Eternity;They pass like spirits of the past,--they speakLike 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,The dread of vanished shadows--Are they so?Is not the past all shadow?--What are they?Creations of the mind?--The mind can makeSubstance, and people planets of its ownWith beings brighter than have been, and giveA breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.I would recall a vision which I dreamedPerchance in sleep--for in itself a thought,A slumbering thought, is capable of years,And curdles a long life into one hour.

I saw two beings in the hues of youthStanding upon a hill, a gentle hill,Green and of mild declivity, the lastAs 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,Save that there was no sea to lave its base,But a most living landscape, and the waveOf woods and cornfields, and the abodes of menScattered at intervals, and wreathing smokeArising from such rustic roofs;--the hillWas crowned with a peculiar diademOf trees, in circular array, so fixed,Not by the sport of nature, but of man:These two, a maiden and a youth, were thereGazing--the one on all that was beneathFair as herself--but the Boy gazed on her;And both were young, and one was beautiful:And both were young--yet not alike in youth.As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,The Maid was on the eve of Womanhood;The Boy had fewer summers, but his heartHad far outgrown his years, and to his eyeThere was but one belovéd face on earth,And that was shining on him: he had lookedUpon it till it could not pass away;He had no breath, no being, but in hers;She was his voice; he did not speak to her,But trembled on her words; she was his sight,For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,Which coloured all his objects:--he had ceasedTo live within himself; she was his life,The ocean to the river of his thoughts,Which terminated all: upon a tone,A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,And his cheek change tempestuously--his heartUnknowing of its cause of agony.But she in these fond feelings had no share:Her sighs were not for him; to her he wasEven as a brother--but no more; 'twas much,For brotherless she was, save in the nameHer infant friendship had bestowed on him;Herself the solitary scion leftOf a time-honoured race.--It was a nameWhich pleased him, and yet pleased him not--and why?Time taught him a deep answer--when she lovedAnother: even now she loved another,And on the summit of that hill she stoodLooking afar if yet her lover's steedKept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.There was an ancient mansion, and beforeIts walls there was a steed caparisoned:Within an antique Oratory stoodThe Boy of whom I spake;--he was alone,And pale, and pacing to and fro: anonHe sate him down, and seized a pen, and tracedWords which I could not guess of; then he leanedHis bowed head on his hands, and shook as 'twereWith a convulsion--then arose again,And with his teeth and quivering hands did tearWhat he had written, but he shed no tears.And he did calm himself, and fix his browInto a kind of quiet: as he paused,The Lady of his love re-entered there;She was serene and smiling then, and yetShe knew she was by him beloved--she knew,For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heartWas darkened with her shadow, and she sawThat he was wretched, but she saw not all.He rose, and with a cold and gentle graspHe took her hand; a moment o'er his faceA tablet of unutterable thoughtsWas traced, and then it faded, as it came;He dropped the hand he held, and with slow stepsRetired, but not as bidding her adieu,For they did part with mutual smiles; he passedFrom out the massy gate of that old Hall,And mounting on his steed he went his way;And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wildsOf fiery climes he made himself a home,And his Soul drank their sunbeams: he was girtWith strange and dusky aspects; he was notHimself like what he had been; on the seaAnd on the shore he was a wanderer;There was a mass of many imagesCrowded like waves upon me, but he wasA part of all; and in the last he layReposing from the noontide sultriness,Couched among fallen columns, in the shadeOf ruined walls that had survived the namesOf those who reared them; by his sleeping sideStood camels grazing, and some goodly steedsWere fastened near a fountain; and a manClad in a flowing garb did watch the while,While many of his tribe slumbered around:And they were canopied by the blue sky,So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.The Lady of his love was wed with OneWho did not love her better:--in her home,A thousand leagues from his,--her native home,She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy,Daughters and sons of Beauty,--but behold!Upon her face there was the tint of grief,The settled shadow of an inward strife,And an unquiet drooping of the eye,As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.What could her grief be?--she had all she loved,And he who had so loved her was not thereTo trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.What could her grief be?--she had loved him not,Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,Nor could he be a part of that which preyedUpon her mind--a spectre of the past.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.The Wanderer was returned.--I saw him standBefore an Altar--with a gentle bride;Her face was fair, but was not that which madeThe Starlight of his Boyhood;--as he stoodEven at the altar, o'er his brow there cameThe self-same aspect, and the quivering shockThat in the antique Oratory shookHis bosom in its solitude; and then--As in that hour--a moment o'er his faceThe tablet of unutterable thoughtsWas traced,--and then it faded as it came,And he stood calm and quiet, and he spokeThe fitting vows, but heard not his own words,And all things reeled around him; he could seeNot that which was, nor that which should have been--But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall,And the remembered chambers, and the place,The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,All things pertaining to that place and hourAnd her who was his destiny, came backAnd thrust themselves between him and the light:What business had they there at such a time?

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.The Lady of his love;--Oh! she was changedAs by the sickness of the soul; her mindHad wandered from its dwelling, and her eyesThey had not their own lustre, but the lookWhich is not of the earth; she was becomeThe Queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughtsWere combinations of disjointed things;And forms, impalpable and unperceivedOf others' sight, familiar were to hers.And this the world calls frenzy; but the wiseHave a far deeper madness--and the glanceOf melancholy is a fearful gift;What is it but the telescope of truth?Which strips the distance of its fantasies,And brings life near in utter nakedness,Making the cold reality too real!

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,The beings which surrounded him were gone,Or were at war with him; he was a markFor blight and desolation, compassed roundWith Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixedIn all which was served up to him, until,Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,He fed on poisons, and they had no power,But were a kind of nutriment; he livedThrough that which had been death to many men,And made him friends of mountains: with the starsAnd the quick Spirit of the UniverseHe held his dialogues; and they did teachTo him the magic of their mysteries;To him the book of Night was opened wide,And voices from the deep abyss revealedA marvel and a secret--Be it so.

My dream was past; it had no further change.It was of a strange order, that the doomOf these two creatures should be thus traced outAlmost like a reality--the oneTo end in madness--both in misery.