Dreams
from: Odes and Ballads
Translated by: Henry Carrington
Far from the city's pile,
Far from the kingly court,
Far from Rank's envious smile,
Far from the Rabble vile,
There, friends, be my resort.
Amid the fields that teach
Calm wisdom to the mind,
Or by some silent beach,
Where form the world can reach
Neither the wave nor wind.
Some shelter lone and hoar,
Some refuge still and old,
Some port beside the shore,
Some nest the leaves strech o'er,
Some house the woods enfold.
Let it be dark and sad,
And calm and wrapt in sleep,
With forest mantle clad,
In the silence and the shade,
Hid in recesses deep.
There above everything,
Faithful to every tie,
My muse shall stretch her wing,
And now of flowers sing,
And now of mountains high.
And shall her daring fire,
Loose from all shackles be;
Her flight shall never tire,
But higher soar and higher,
As a wild bird set free.
II
Let me in dreams ascend
To heavens of love and shade,
And let them never end,
But night the vision lend,
That in the day was made.
And white as is the sail
I through the distance see
Let it a starbeam pale
Disclose, to be a veil
Between my life and me.
And let the Muse still haste,
All bright my night to make,
And gild and make it last,
And from the vision vast,
Be fearful to awake.
Let all my thoughts be there
In their best beauty found;
And sit with zealous care,
A choir all bright and rare,
Circling my hearth around.
And to my dream enchained,
Let them, with raptured eye,
Above its cradle bend,
As elder sisters tend
Their infant brother by.
III
Faith dwells upon the seas,
And in the forests high,
There can we breathe at ease;
No crushing weight have these,
To keep us from the sky.
There all is like a dream,
Each sound some truth avows;
All speak, and singing seem,
On the bank from out the stream,
From the wind among the boughs.
It is a voice profound,
Creation's total song;
It is the Globe's vast sound,
The world as it turns round
The heavenly space along.
It is the Echo grand,
Wherein God's voice we know --
Hymn of the Seraph band,
Of the world calm and bland,
Where go all doomed to go.
Where can no cries affright,
Where sobs and tears withstood,
Soul does with soul unite,
As light is mixed with light,
And flood unites to flood.
IV
There sounds sublime shall sweep
Each solitude along;
Paris in folly's sleep,
'Stead of these tongues that weep,
Gives us an idle song.
Oh! ancient Brittany,
Oh! for your foam-dashed beach,
Your Celtic forests high,
With Gothic castles nigh--
Only I would beseech
That my old feudal tower,
Where I shall make my nest,
Hoar castellane of power, --
With ivy crown embower
It's rugged granite crest.
And I would have descried
Some scutcheon to admire,
Upon the chimney wide,
Whose furnace to provide
An oak is set on fire.
In summer, hedges tall
Must shade from heaven's rays;
In winter, we must all
Sit round the lighted hall
Red with a mighty blaze.
In the woods my kingly range
When sounds pervade the night,
Their tops shall seem to change
To phantoms weird and strange,
And wage mysterious fight.
Let virgins round me press,
Bright swarms, the heavens that fill,
All clad in loveliness;
Waving their flowing dress,
Through the night watches still.
And with a voice of woe
The ghost of Knight and Lord
Shall through the forest go,
Pale, ghastly -- to and fro -
Or darkly stalk abroad.
V
If my muse rapt on high
Carries its treasured nest
And winged family
To ruined keep -- once by
Some Baron bold possessed;
'Tis that those times I love,
Brighter, if not more good,
Than those in which we move;
And their wild record prove
Dear to the Poet's mood.
The swallow on the tower,
Seeking from flight to rest,
Saved from the tempest's power,
Has sometimes made her bower
In some old vulture's nest.
Where, with soft beak, her young,
Within the nest at play
Oft push (the moss among)
Some broken egg along,
Left by the bird of prey.
Mid arms of by-gone years,
My muse, in Fairy realm,
Mid ancient pikes and spears,
Strange as a dwarf appears,
Wearing a giant's helm.
VI
Thus in the fields shall pass
My green and happy hours;
In the castle's stately mass,
Like a stray root of grass,
In the breaches of old towers.
But cot, or tower of night,
The world shall bind me not;
I will live in the light,
In prayer and fancy bright,
Forgetting and forgot.
June 1828
