“Then do as you are commanded,” the soul replied. And wearily the body
took a pen again. Then the soul spoke merrily as he looked through the
window. “There is a mountain lifting sheer above London, part crystal
and part mist. Thither the dreamers go when the sound of the traffic has
fallen. At first they scarcely dream because of the roar of it, but
before midnight it stops, and turns, and ebbs with all its wrecks. Then
the dreamers arise and scale the shimmering mountain, and at its summit
find the galleons of dream. Thence some sail East, some West, some into
the Past and some into the Future, for the galleons sail over the years
as well as over the spaces, but mostly they head for the Past and the
olden harbours, for thither the sighs of men are mostly turned, and the
dream-ships go before them, as the merchantmen before the continual
trade-winds go down the African coast. I see the galleons even now raise
anchor after anchor; the stars flash by them; they slip out of the
night; their prows go gleaming into the twilight of memory, and night
soon lies far off, a black cloud hanging low, and faintly spangled with
stars, like the harbour and shore of some low-lying land seen afar with
its harbour lights.”
Dream after dream that soul related as he sat there by the window. He
told of tropical forests seen by unhappy men who could not escape from
London, and never would—forests made suddenly wondrous by the song of
some passing bird flying to unknown eeries and singing an unknown song.
He saw the old men lightly dancing to the tune of elfin pipes—beautiful
dances with fantastic maidens—all night on moonlit imaginary mountains;
he heard far off the music of glittering Springs; he saw the fairness of
blossoms of apple and may thirty years fallen; he heard old voices—old
tears came glistening back; Romance sat cloaked and crowned upon
southern hills, and the soul knew him.
One by one he told the dreams of all that slept in that street.
Sometimes he stopped to revile the body because it worked badly and
slowly. Its chill fingers wrote as fast as they could, but the soul
cared not for that. And so the night wore on till the soul heard
tinkling in Oriental skies far footfalls of the morning.
“See now,” said the soul, “the dawn that the dreamers dread. The sails
of light are paling on those unwreckable galleons; the mariners that
steer them slip back into fable and myth; that other sea the traffic is
turning now at its ebb, and is about to hide its pallid wrecks, and to
come swinging back, with its tumult, at the flow. Already the sunlight
flashes in the gulfs behind the east of the world; the gods have seen it
from their palace of twilight that they built above the sunrise; they
warm their hands at its glow as it streams through their gleaming
arches, before it reaches the world; all the gods are there that have
ever been, and all the gods that shall be; they sit there in the
morning, chanting and praising Man.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account