by Coleridge · Cluster: Dreams · Moon
Abstract
A dialogue poem on a dream-vision of a lovely form that changes, meditating on dreams, the double, and the passage of years as the dream of life.
Connections
Topoi: Double Motifs: Dreams, Sleep Themes & Concepts: Appearance vs Reality, Romantic Love, Identity
Testo integrale / Full text
AUTHOR
A lovely form there sate beside my bed,
And such a feeding calm its presence shed,
A tender love so pure from earthly leaven,
That I unnethe the fancy might control,
‘Twas my own spirit newly come from heaven, 5
Wooing its gentle way into my soul!
But ah! the change — It had not stirr’d, and yet —
Alas! that change how fain would I forget!
That shrinking back, like one that had mistook!
That weary, wandering, disavowing look! 10
‘Twas all another, feature, look, and frame,
And still, methought, I knew, it was the same!
FRIEND
This riddling tale, to what does it belong?
Is’t history? vision? or an idle song?
Or rather say at once, within what space 15
Of time this wild disastrous change took place?
AUTHOR
Call it a moment’s work (and such it seems)
This tale’s a fragment from the life of dreams;
But say, that years matur’d the silent strife,
And ‘tis a record from the dream of life. 20
? 1830.