INTRODUCTION TO THE DREAM.

In

"THE DREAM"-called in the first draught "The Destiny" '-was composed at Diodati in July, 1816, and reflects the train of thought engendered by the recent quarrel with Lady Byron. The misery of his marriage led him to revert to his early passion for Miss Chaworth, whose union had proved no happier than his own, and, amid many tears, he traced their respective fates in verse which is the rarest combination of historical simplicity with poetic beauty. The attachment to Miss Chaworth began in his childhood, and reached its height in his sixteenth year, when he spent the summer holidays of 1803 at Nottingham, and was a constant guest at Annesley Hall. She was two years his senior at a period when the difference made her a woman, and left him a boy. He had nothing beyond his rank to compensate for the disadvantage-his genius was not so much as in the bud, his beauty undeveloped, his manners rough, and his temper ungovernable. The succeeding year he bade her farewell on the hill which is celebrated in "The Dream." "The next time I see you," he said, "I suppose you will be Mrs. Chaworth,"-for her husband originally took her name,-and she answered "I hope so." She naturally numbered Lord Byron's attachment among the fickle ebullitions of juvenile susceptibility, and would have treated it with coldness, even if her heart had not been already won. 1805 she was united to Mr. Musters, a gentleman of a noble appearance and of an ancient family. There was no sympathy between their characters, and his conduct to her was reported to be harsh and capricious. He never relished Lord Byron's allusions to her, and after the publication of "The Dream" he cut down the celebrated "diadem of trees" which grew on his estate. His beautiful and accomplished bride became the victim of her cares, and she sunk into lunacy. In 1832 she closed her tragic life by a mournful death. A party of Nottingham rioters sacked Colwick Hall, and she and her daughter took refuge in the shrubbery, where her constitution received a fatal shock from the combined effects of cold and terror. Lord Byron always kept the conviction that the lady of Annesley would have averted his destiny. In 1822 having called her in his Diary "my M. A. C.," he suddenly exclaims, "Alas! why do I say MY? Our union would have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers,—it would have joined lands broad and rich, it would have joined at least one heart, and two persons not ill-matched in years, and -and-and-what has been the result?" The consideration of his character leads us to think that the result would not have been widely different if he had prospered in his suit; and the romance that must always linger round the name of Miss Chaworth is probably none the less that it comes to us invested with the hues of imagination instead of the light of experience.

VOL. II.

F

"Successful love may sate itself away;

The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate
To have all feeling, save the one, decay,

And every passion into one dilate,

As rapid rivers into ocean pour;

But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore."

So wrote the poet in the name of Tasso, with his own unrequited attachment for Miss Chaworth in his mind. That she was worthy of the lasting passion she raised, that he loved her with a deeper fervour than was ever excited by any future favourite, may be readily admitted; but had his love been successful it would have sated itself away, and the woman who could permanently have fixed his affections might have aspired to chain the winds.

THE DREAM.

I.

OUR life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.

And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past,—they speak
Like Sibyls of the future; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;

They make us what we were not-what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanish'd shadows-Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow ?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?-The mind can make
Substance, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'd
Perchance in sleep-for in itself a thought,

A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

II.

I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of mild declivity, the last As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scatter'd at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs;-the hill Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array, so fix'd, Not by the sport of nature, but of man: These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Gazing-the one on all that was beneath Fair as herself-but the boy gazed on her; And both were young, and one was beautiful : And both were young-yet not alike in youth. As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood; The boy had fewer summers, but his heart Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him: he had look'd Upon it till it could not pass away; He had no breath, no being, but in hers; She was his voice; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words; she was his sight,' For his eye follow'd hers, and saw with hers, Which colour'd all his objects:-he had ceased To live within himself; she was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all: upon a tone,

A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,