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- 1801
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 1733
- text
- CHAPTER XV.
Dreams
Dreams! dreams! golden dreams: endless, and golden, as the flowery
prairies, that stretch away from the Rio Sacramento, in whose waters
Danae’s shower was woven;—prairies like rounded eternities: jonquil
leaves beaten out; and my dreams herd like buffaloes, browsing on to
the horizon, and browsing on round the world; and among them, I dash
with my lance, to spear one, ere they all flee.
Dreams! dreams! passing and repassing, like Oriental empires in
history; and scepters wave thick, as Bruce’s pikes at Bannockburn; and
crowns are plenty as marigolds in June. And far in the background, hazy
and blue, their steeps let down from the sky, loom Andes on Andes,
rooted on Alps; and all round me, long rushing oceans, roll Amazons and
Oronocos; waves, mounted Parthians; and, to and fro, toss the wide
woodlands: all the world an elk, and the forests its antlers.
But far to the South, past my Sicily suns and my vineyards, stretches
the Antarctic barrier of ice: a China wall, built up from the sea, and
nodding its frosted towers in the dun, clouded sky. Do Tartary and
Siberia lie beyond? Deathful, desolate dominions those; bleak and wild
the ocean, beating at that barrier’s base, hovering ’twixt freezing and
foaming; and freighted with navies of ice-bergs,—warring worlds
crossing orbits; their long icicles, projecting like spears to the
charge. Wide away stream the floes of drift ice, frozen cemeteries of
skeletons and bones. White bears howl as they drift from their cubs;
and the grinding islands crush the skulls of the peering seals.
But beneath me, at the Equator, the earth pulses and beats like a
warrior’s heart; till I know not, whether it be not myself. And my soul
sinks down to the depths, and soars to the skies; and comet-like reels
on through such boundless expanses, that methinks all the worlds are my
kin, and I invoke them to stay in their course. Yet, like a mighty
three-decker, towing argosies by scores, I tremble, gasp, and strain in
my flight, and fain would cast off the cables that hamper.
And like a frigate, I am full with a thousand souls; and as on, on, on,
I scud before the wind, many mariners rush up from the orlop below,
like miners from caves; running shouting across my decks; opposite
braces are pulled; and this way and that, the great yards swing round
on their axes; and boisterous speaking-trumpets are heard; and
contending orders, to save the good ship from the shoals. Shoals, like
nebulous vapors, shoreing the white reef of the Milky Way, against
which the wrecked worlds are dashed; strewing all the strand, with
their Himmaleh keels and ribs.
Ay: many, many souls are in me. In my tropical calms, when my ship lies
tranced on Eternity’s main, speaking one at a time, then all with one
voice: an orchestra of many French bugles and horns, rising, and
falling, and swaying, in golden calls and responses.
Sometimes, when these Atlantics and Pacifics thus undulate round me, I
lie stretched out in their midst: a land-locked Mediterranean, knowing
no ebb, nor flow. Then again, I am dashed in the spray of these sounds:
an eagle at the world’s end, tossed skyward, on the horns of the
tempest.
Yet, again, I descend, and list to the concert.
Like a grand, ground swell, Homer’s old organ rolls its vast volumes
under the light frothy wave-crests of Anacreon and Hafiz; and high over
my ocean, sweet Shakespeare soars, like all the larks of the spring.
Throned on my seaside, like Canute, bearded Ossian smites his hoar
harp, wreathed with wild-flowers, in which warble my Wallers; blind
Milton sings bass to my Petrarchs and Priors, and laureate crown me
with bays.
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