The Dreamer.

This is the dream of the Dreamer

With the grave thought-sunken eyes,

Which he dreamed between sleeping and waking,

Between the night and the making

Of dawn... and he dreamed in this wise:

To the gate of the dawn came a chariot

Which four black stallions were drawing,

And a spirit charioteer,

With the burning eyes of a seer,

Held them impatiently pawing.

He mounted the floor of the chariot,

And the Spirit drew together

His reins, his strong grip tight'ning,

And his thong flashed out like a lightning,

And the horses rushed up to æther.

The Dreamer was caught into space

With a pang as of ending or birth,

And lo! clouds builded above him,

And beneath him soundless and moving

The sea of his own little earth.

They clove the walls of the clouds,

And snorted each coal black stallion

Nursed by the Spirit, whose hair

Streamed out like a banner, and bare

In the night was the moon — a medallion

And then an ice-sheathed corpse

With ancient glaciers and snouted

Craters of fires extinct,

Chain on chain of them linked.

And the Lord of the Chariot shouted

And shook out his hissing lash

Over the backs of the four

Till they whirled up faster and faster,

Till the sun became vaster and vaster,

And its flames leapt out with a roar

Of mountains, subsident, resurging,

Innumerable, ceaseless of action,

Years and years into space....

And the Dreamer covered his face,

As he rode, in his stupefaction.

They passed with a dip and a swerve,

As a swallow skims the downs,

Far up into the height,

And the stars looked down from the night

Like the lights of distant towns.

Swift is the lonely thought

Of a sage, a mountain-dweller,

But swifter far was their rush

Thro’ the awful cold and the hush

Of the spaces interstellar.

They heard the approaching thunder,

And saw the glare of a comet

Holding its destined way

To an undiscovered day,

And its tresses streamed out from it.

They broke thro’ other systems,

By huger alien spheres,

Each in its orbit travelling,

The timeless skeins unravelling

Of a law with no count of years

And came at last to a planet,

Girt in a gleaming ring

Of cloud and vapour and mist,

Which the light of four moons kissed

To a wonderful milk-white thing.

Then the Spirit reined in his stallions,

And pointed in exultation

And turned his orbèd eyes,

Which burned with a wild surmise

And a dreadful penetration,

On the Dreamer, who followed, and lo!

The Heavens had changed their stations,

And their voids were with unknown

And greater galaxies sown

And altered constellations.

And, beyond, a scatter of crystals,

And, beyond, bright motes in a beam,

And, beyond, while the Spirit probed him

To the soul in the flesh that robed him,

An uncountable shimmering stream.

He saw these worlds all marshalled,

And their ways all governed for ever;

And he felt the sight of his soul

Shrivel up like a fire-licked scroll

In his insupportable terror.

Then the Spirit pointed again,

And wheeled the might of his horses

And shouted... and down they fell,

As a pebble drops in a well,

Thro’ the worlds and the roar of their courses.

And the Dreamer looked, and behold!

In a point to æons withdrawn....

A scarce visible speck of light,

His own sun like a mite,

And the blur of his own little dawn.