But, looking at his friend, he discovers “a trouble in thine eye”—an expression of sadness, which his dream will not account for. The light of day reveals the truth. He awakes, and perceives that his own grief, the trouble of his youth, had transferred itself to the image he saw in his dream.
LXIX.
He dreams again, and nature seems to have become distorted, and will not answer to the seasons. Smoke and frost fill the streets, and hawkers chatter trifles at the doors.
He wanders into a wood, and finds only “thorny boughs.” Of these he forms a crown, which he places on his head. For wearing this, he is scoffed at and derided; but an angel comes and touches it into leaf, and speaks words of comfort, “hard to understand,” being the language of a higher world.
The occurrences in this dream seem to have been suggested by the indignities offered to our Lord before His crucifixion.
LXX.
The confusion of nightmare, with hideous imagery, follows his effort to discern the features of Hallam; till all at once the horrid shapes disperse, and his nerves are composed by a pleasanter vision:
“I hear a wizard music roll,
And thro’ a lattice on the soul
Looks thy fair face and makes it still.”
LXXI.
Sleep, from its capturing power over the brain, is called “kinsman to death and trance and madness;” and is here acknowledged as affording