The Pilgrims of the Rhine

  CHAPTER XXIII. THE LIFE OF DREAMS.

  "I WAS born," said he, "with many of the sentiments of the poet, butwithout the language to express them; my feelings were constantlychilled by the intercourse of the actual world. My family, mere Germans,dull and unimpassioned, had nothing in common with me; nor did I out ofmy family find those with whom I could better sympathize. I was revoltedby friendships,--for they were susceptible to every change; I wasdisappointed in love,--for the truth never approached to my ideal.Nursed early in the lap of Romance, enamoured of the wild and theadventurous, the commonplaces of life were to me inexpressibly tame andjoyless. And yet indolence, which belongs to the poetical character, wasmore inviting than that eager and uncontemplative action which can alonewring enterprise from life. Meditation was my natural element. I lovedto spend the noon reclined by some shady stream, and in a half sleepto shape images from the glancing sunbeams. A dim and unreal order ofphilosophy, that belongs to our nation, was my favourite intellectualpursuit; and I sought amongst the Obscure and the Recondite the varietyand emotion I could not find in the Familiar. Thus constantly watchingthe operations of the inner mind, it occurred to me at last that sleephaving its own world, but as yet a rude and fragmentary one, it mightbe possible to shape from its chaos all those combinations of beauty,of power, of glory, and of love, which were denied to me in the world inwhich my frame walked and had its being. So soon as this idea came uponme, I nursed and cherished and mused over it, till I found that theimagination began to effect the miracle I desired. By brooding ardently,intensely, before I retired to rest, over any especial train ofthought, over any ideal creations; by keeping the body utterly still andquiescent during the whole day; by shutting out all living adventure,the memory of which might perplex and interfere with the streamof events that I desired to pour forth into the wilds of sleep, Idiscovered at last that I could lead in dreams a life solely their own,and utterly distinct from the life of day. Towers and palaces, allmy heritage and seigneury, rose before me from the depths of night; Iquaffed from jewelled cups the Falernian of imperial vaults; music fromharps of celestial tone filled up the crevices of air; and the smiles ofimmortal beauty flushed like sunlight over all. Thus the adventure andthe glory that I could not for my waking life obtain, was obtained forme in sleep. I wandered with the gryphon and the gnome; I sounded thehorn at enchanted portals; I conquered in the knightly lists; I plantedmy standard over battlements huge as the painter's birth of Babylonitself.

  "But I was afraid to call forth one shape on whose loveliness to pourall the hidden passion of my soul. I trembled lest my sleep shouldpresent me some image which it could never restore, and, waking fromwhich, even the new world I had created might be left desolate forever.I shuddered lest I should adore a vision which the first ray of morningcould smite to the grave.

  "In this train of mind I began to wonder whether it might not bepossible to connect dreams together; to supply the thread that waswanting; to make one night continue the history of the other, so asto bring together the same shapes and the same scenes, and thus lead aconnected and harmonious life, not only in the one half of existence,but in the other, the richer and more glorious half. No sooner did thisidea present itself to me, than I burned to accomplish it. I had beforetaught myself that Faith is the great creator; that to believe ferventlyis to make belief true. So I would not suffer my mind to doubt thepracticability of its scheme. I shut myself up then entirely by day,refused books, and hated the very sun, and compelled all my thoughts(and sleep is the mirror of thought) to glide in one direction,--thedirection of my dreams,--so that from night to night the imaginationmight keep up the thread of action, and I might thus lie down full ofthe past dream and confident of the sequel. Not for one day only, or forone month, did I pursue this system, but I continued it zealously andsternly till at length it began to succeed. Who shall tell," cried theenthusiast,--I see him now with his deep, bright, sunken eyes, and hiswild hair thrown backward from his brow,--"the rapture I experienced,when first, faintly and half distinct, I perceived the harmony I hadinvoked dawn upon my dreams? At first there was only a partial anddesultory connection between them; my eye recognized certain shapes, myear certain tones common to each; by degrees these augmented in number,and were more defined in outline. At length one fair face broke forthfrom among the ruder forms, and night after night appeared mixing withthem for a moment and then vanishing, just as the mariner watches, ina clouded sky, the moon shining through the drifting rack, and quicklygone. My curiosity was now vividly excited; the face, with its lustrouseyes and seraph features, roused all the emotions that no living shapehad called forth. I became enamoured of a dream, and as the statue tothe Cyprian was my creation to me; so from this intent and unceasingpassion I at length worked out my reward. My dream became more palpable;I spoke with it; I knelt to it; my lips were pressed to its own; weexchanged the vows of love, and morning only separated us with thecertainty that at night we should meet again. Thus then," continued myvisionary, "I commenced a history utterly separate from the history ofthe world, and it went on alternately with my harsh and chilling historyof the day, equally regular and equally continuous. And what, you ask,was that history? Methought I was a prince in some Eastern island thathad no features in common with the colder north of my native home. Byday I looked upon the dull walls of a German town, and saw homely orsqualid forms passing before me; the sky was dim and the sun cheerless.Night came on with her thousand stars, and brought me the dews of sleep.Then suddenly there was a new world; the richest fruits hung from thetrees in clusters of gold and purple. Palaces of the quaint fashion ofthe sunnier climes, with spiral minarets and glittering cupolas, weremirrored upon vast lakes sheltered by the palm-tree and banana. The sunseemed a different orb, so mellow and gorgeous were his beams; birds andwinged things of all hues fluttered in the shining air; the faces andgarments of men were not of the northern regions of the world, and theirvoices spoke a tongue which, strange at first, by degrees I interpreted.Sometimes I made war upon neighbouring kings; sometimes I chased thespotted pard through the vast gloom of immemorial forests; my lifewas at once a life of enterprise and pomp. But above all there was thehistory of my love! I thought there were a thousand difficulties in theway of attaining its possession. Many were the rocks I had to scale, andthe battles to wage, and the fortresses to storm, in order to win her asmy bride. But at last" (continued the enthusiast), "she _is_ won, sheis my own! Time in that wild world, which I visit nightly, passes notso slowly as in this, and yet an hour may be the same as a year. Thiscontinuity of existence, this successive series of dreams, so differentfrom the broken incoherence of other men's sleep, at times bewilders mewith strange and suspicious thoughts. What if this glorious sleep be areal life, and this dull waking the true repose? Why not? What is theremore faithful in the one than in the other? And there have I garneredand collected all of pleasure that I am capable of feeling. I seekno joy in this world; I form no ties, I feast not, nor love, nor makemerry; I am only impatient till the hour when I may re-enter my royalrealms and pour my renewed delight into the bosom of my bright Ideal.There then have I found all that the world denied me; there have Irealized the yearning and the aspiration within me; there have I coinedthe untold poetry into the Felt, the Seen!"

  I found, continued Trevylyan, that this tale was corroborated by inquiryinto the visionary's habits. He shunned society; avoided all unnecessarymovement or excitement. He fared with rigid abstemiousness, and onlyappeared to feel pleasure as the day departed, and the hour of return tohis imaginary kingdom approached. He always retired to rest punctuallyat a certain hour, and would sleep so soundly that a cannon fired underhis window would not arouse him. He never, which may seem singular,spoke or moved much in his sleep, but was peculiarly calm, almost tothe appearance of lifelessness; but, discovering once that he had beenwatched in sleep, he was wont afterwards carefully to secure the chamberfrom intrusion. His victory over the natural incoherence of sleep had,when I first knew him, lasted for some years; possib
ly what imaginationfirst produced was afterwards continued by habit.

  I saw him again a few months subsequent to this confession, and heseemed to me much changed. His health was broken, and his abstractionhad deepened into gloom.

  I questioned him of the cause of the alteration, and he answered me withgreat reluctance,--

  "She is dead," said he; "my realms are desolate! A serpent stung her,and she died in these very arms. Vainly, when I started from my sleep inhorror and despair, vainly did I say to myself,--This is but a dream. Ishall see her again. A vision cannot die! Hath it flesh that decays; isit not a spirit,--bodiless, indissoluble? With what terrible anxietyI awaited the night! Again I slept, and the DREAM lay again before me,dead and withered. Even the ideal can vanish. I assisted in the burial;I laid her in the earth; I heaped the monumental mockery over her form.And never since hath she, or ought like her, revisited my dreams. I seeher only when I wake; thus to wake is indeed to dream! But," continuedthe visionary in a solemn voice, "I feel myself departing from thisworld, and with a fearful joy; for I think there may be a land beyondeven the land of sleep where I shall see her again,--a land in which avision itself may be restored."

  And in truth, concluded Trevylyan, the dreamer died shortly afterwards,suddenly, and in his sleep. And never before, perhaps, had Fate soliterally made of a living man (with his passions and his powers, hisambition and his love) the plaything and puppet of a dream!

  "Ah," said Vane, who had heard the latter part of Trevylyan's story,"could the German have bequeathed to us his secret, what a refuge shouldwe possess from the ills of earth! The dungeon and disease, poverty,affliction, shame, would cease to be the tyrants of our lot; and toSleep we should confine our history and transfer our emotions."

  "Gertrude," whispered the lover, "what his kingdom and his bride were tothe Dreamer art thou to me!"