Chapter 15

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