She dreamed a dream, of walking in a wood—
A “wood obscure,” like that where Dante found561
Himself in at the age when all grow good;562
Life’s half-way house, where dames with virtue crowned
Run much less risk of lovers turning rude;
And that this wood was full of pleasant fruits,
And trees of goodly growth and spreading roots;
LXXVI
And in the midst a golden apple grew—
A most prodigious pippin—but it hung
Rather too high and distant; that she threw
Her glances on it, and then, longing, flung
Stones and whatever she could pick up, to
Bring down the fruit, which still perversely clung
To its own bough, and dangled yet in sight,
But always at a most provoking height;563
LXXVII
That on a sudden, when she least had hope,
It fell down of its own accord before
Her feet; that her first movement was to stoop
And pick it up, and bite it to the core;
That just as her young lip began to ope564
Upon the golden fruit the vision bore,
A bee flew out, and stung her to the heart,
And so—she woke with a great scream and start.
LXXVIII
All this she told with some confusion and
Dismay, the usual consequence of dreams
Of the unpleasant kind, with none at hand
To expound their vain and visionary gleams.
I’ve known some odd ones which seemed really planned
Prophetically, or that which one deems
A “strange coincidence,” to use a phrase
By which such things are settled now-a-days.565
LXXIX
The damsels, who had thoughts of some great harm,
Began, as is the consequence of fear,
To scold a little at the false alarm
That broke for nothing on their sleeping ear.
The matron, too, was wroth to leave her warm
Bed for the dream she had been obliged to hear,
And chafed at poor Dudù, who only sighed,
And said, that she was sorry she had cried.
LXXX
“I’ve heard of stories of a cock and bull;
But visions of an apple and a bee,
To take us from our natural rest, and pull
The whole Oda from their beds at half-past three,
Would make us think the moon is at its full.
You surely are unwell, child! we must see,
To-morrow, what his Highness’s physician
Will say to this hysteric of a vision.
LXXXI
“And poor Juanna, too, the child’s first night
Within these walls, to be broke in upon
With such a clamour—I had thought it right
That the young stranger should not lie alone,
And, as the quietest of all, she might
With you, Dudù, a good night’s rest have known:
But now I must transfer her to the charge
Of Lolah—though her couch is not so large.”
LXXXII
Lolah’s eyes sparkled at the proposition;
But poor Dudù, with large drops in her own,
Resulting from the scolding or the vision,
Implored that present pardon might be shown
For this first fault, and that on no condition
(She added in a soft and piteous tone)
Juanna should be taken from her, and
Her future dreams should be all kept in hand.
LXXXIII
She promised never more to have a dream,
At least to dream so loudly as just now;
She wondered at herself how she could scream—
’Twas foolish, nervous, as she must allow,
A fond hallucination, and a theme
For laughter—but she felt her spirits low,
And begged they would excuse her; she’d get over
This weakness in a few hours, and recover.
LXXXIV
And here Juanna kindly interposed,
And said she felt herself extremely well
Where she then was, as her sound sleep disclosed,
When all around rang like a tocsin bell;
She did not find herself the least disposed
To quit her gentle partner, and to dwell
Apart from one who had no sin to show,
Save that of dreaming once “mal-à-propos.”
LXXXV
As thus Juanna spoke, Dudù turned round
And hid her face within Juanna’s breast:
Her neck alone was seen, but that was found
The colour of a budding rose’s crest.566
I can’t tell why she blushed, nor can expound
The mystery of this rupture of their rest;
All that I know is, that the facts I state
Are true as Truth has ever been of late,
LXXXVI
And so good night to them—or, if you will,
Good morrow—for the cock had crown, and light
Began to clothe each Asiatic hill,
And the mosque crescent struggled into sight
Of the long caravan, which in the chill
Of dewy dawn wound slowly round each height
That stretches to the stony belt, which girds
Asia, where Kaff looks down upon the Kurds.567
LXXXVII
With the first ray, or rather grey of morn,
Gulbeyaz rose from restlessness; and pale
As Passion rises, with its bosom worn,
Arrayed herself with mantle, gem, and veil.
The Nightingale that sings with the deep thorn,
Which fable places in her breast of wail,
Is lighter far of heart and voice than those
Whose headlong passions form their proper woes.
LXXXVIII
And that’s the moral of this composition,
If people would but see its real drift;—
But that they will not do without suspicion,
Because all gentle readers have the gift
Of closing ’gainst the light their orbs of vision:
While gentle writers also love to lift
Their voices ’gainst each other, which is natural,
The numbers are too great for them to flatter all.
LXXXIX
Rose the Sultana from a bed of splendour,
Softer than the soft Sybarite’s, who cried568
Aloud because his feelings were too tender
To brook a ruffled rose-leaf by his side—
So beautiful that Art could little mend her,
Though pale with conflicts between Love and Pride;—
So agitated was she with her error,
She did not even look into the mirror.
XC
Also arose about the self-same time,
Perhaps a little later, her great Lord,
Master of thirty kingdoms so sublime,
And of a wife by whom he was abhorred;
A thing of much less import in that clime—
At least to those of incomes which afford
The filling up their whole connubial cargo—
Than where two wives are
