20
“Listen! for I can launch you on the stream
Will roll you to the shores of her own land …
I could be sworn you never learned to dream,
But every night you take with careless hand
What chance may bring? I’ll teach you to command
The comings and the goings of your spirit
Through all that borderland which dreams inherit.
21
“You shall have hauntings suddenly. And often,
When you forget, when least you think of her
(For so you shall forget), a light will soften
Over the evening woods. And in the stir
Of morning dreams (oh, I will teach you, Sir)
There’ll come a sound of wings. Or you shall be
Waked in the midnight murmuring, ‘It was she.’ ”
22
“No, no,” said Dymer, “not that way. I seem
To have slept for twenty years. Now—while I shake
Out of my eyes that dust of burdening dream,
Now when the long clouds tremble ripe to break
And the far hills appear, when first I wake,
Still blinking, struggling towards the world of men,
And longing—would you turn me back again?
23
“Dreams? I have had my dream too long. I thought
The sun rose for my sake. I ran down blind
And dancing to the abyss. Oh, Sir, I brought
Boy-laughter for a gift to gods who find
The martyr’s soul too soft. But that’s behind.
I’m waking now. They broke me. All ends thus
Always—and we’re for them, not they for us.
24
“And she—she was no dream. It would be waste
To seek her there, the living in that den
Of lies.” The Master smiled. “You are in haste!
For broken dreams the cure is, Dream again
And deeper. If the waking world, and men,
And nature marred your dream—so much the worse
For a crude world beneath its primal curse.”
25
—“Ah, but you do not know! Can dreams do this,
Pluck out blood-guiltiness upon the shore
Or memory—and undo what’s done amiss,
And bid the thing that has been be no more?”
—“Sir, it is only dreams unlock that door,”
He answered with a shrug. “What would you have?
In dreams the thrice-proved coward can feel brave.
26
“In dreams the fool is free from scorning voices.
Grey-headed whores are virgin there again.
Out of the past dream brings long-buried choices,
All in a moment snaps the tenfold chain
That life took years in forging. There the stain
Of oldest sins—how do the good words go?—
Though they were scarlet, shall be white as snow.”
27
Then, drawing near, when Dymer did not speak,
“My little son,” said he, “your wrong and right
Are also dreams: fetters to bind the weak
Faster to phantom earth and blear the sight.
Wake into dreams, into the larger light
That quenches these frail stars. They will not know
Earth’s bye-laws in the land to which you go.”
28
—“I must undo my sins.”—“An earthly law,
And, even in earth, the child of yesterday.
Throw down your human pity; cast your awe
Behind you; put repentance all away.
Home to the elder depths! for never they
Supped with the stars who dared not slough behind
The last shred of earth’s holies from their mind.”
29
“Sir,” answered Dymer, “I would be content
To drudge in earth, easing my heart’s disgrace,
Counting a year’s long service lightly spent
If once at the year’s end I saw her face
Somewhere, being then most weary, in some place
I looked not for that joy—or heard her near
Whispering, ‘Yet courage, friend,’ for one more year.”
30
“Pish,” said the Master. “Will you have the truth?
You think that virtue saves? Her people care
For the high heart and idle hours of youth;
For these they will descend our lower air,
Not virtue. You would nerve your arm and bear
Your burden among men? Look to it, child:
By virtue’s self vision can be defiled.
31
“You will grow full of pity and the love of men,
And toil until the morning moisture dries
Out of your heart. Then once, or once again,
It may be you will find her: but your eyes
Soon will be grown too dim. The task that lies
Next to your hand will hide her. You shall be
The child of earth and gods you shall not see.”
32
Here suddenly he ceased. Tip-toes he went.
A bolt clicked—then the window creaked ajar,
And out of the wet world the hedgerow scent
Came floating; and the dark without one star
Nor shape of trees nor sense of near and far,
The undimensioned night and formless skies
Were there, and were the Master’s great allies.
33
“I am very old,” he said. “But if the time
We suffer in our dreams were counted age,
I have outlived the ocean and my prime
Is with me to this day. Years cannot gauge
The dream-life. In the turning of a page,
Dozing above my book, I have lived through
More ages than the lost Lemuria knew.
34
“I am not mortal. Were I doomed to die
This hour, in this half-hour I interpose
A thousand years of dream: and, those gone by,
As many more, and in the last of those,
Ten thousand—ever journeying towards a close
That I shall never reach: for time shall flow,
Wheel within wheel, interminably slow.
35
“And you will drink my cup and go your way
Into the valley of dreams. You have heard the call.
Come hither and escape. Why should you stay?
Earth is a sinking ship, a house whose wall
Is tottering while you sweep; the roof will fall
Before the work is done. You cannot mend it.
Patch as you will, at last the rot must end it.”
36
Then Dymer lifted up his heavy head
Like Atlas on broad shoulders bearing up
The insufferable globe. “I had not said,”
He mumbled, “never said I’d taste the cup.
What, is it this you give me? Must I sup?
Oh, lies, all lies … Why did you kill the lark?
Guide me the cup to lip … it is so dark.”
1
The host had trimmed his lamp. The downy moth
Came from the garden. Where the lamplight shed
Its circle of smooth white upon the cloth,
Down mid the rinds of fruit and broken bread,
Upon his sprawling arms lay Dymer’s head;
And often, as he dreamed, he shifted place,
Muttering and
