When age
fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey
cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow
none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning
stripped Earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of
twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward-looking eyes; when these
things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone away for ever, there
was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the
world's dreams had fled.
Of the
name and abode of this man but little is written, for they were of the
waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough
to know that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned,
and that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening
to a room whose one window opened not on the fields and groves but on a
dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement
one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned
far out and peered aloft at the small stars that passed. And because
mere walls and windows must soon drive to madness a man who dreams and
reads much, the dweller in that room used night to lean out and peer aloft
to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the greyness
of tall cities. After years he began to call the slow-sailing stars
by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of
sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existence
no common eye suspects. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged,
and the dream- haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window
to merge with the close air of his room and make him a part of their fabulous
wonder.
There
came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust
of gold; vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces
and heavy with perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured
there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their
whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable deeps.
Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without
even touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and
for days not counted in men's calendars the tides of far spheres bore him
gently to join the dreams of which he longed' the dreams that men have
lost. And in the course of many cycles they tenderly left him sleeping
on a green sunrise shore; a green shore fragrant with lotus-blossoms and
starred by red camalates...
