ation from all control.
This is what I dreamed:
I stood on a wide plain. On one side, it was bounded by thick woods,
whose dark secret depths looked unfathomable to the eye: on the other,
by hills, ever rising higher and higher yet, until they were lost in
bright, beautifully white clouds, gleaming in refulgent sunlight. On
the side above the woods, the sky was dark and vaporous. It seemed as if
some thick exhalation had arisen from beneath the trees, and overspread
the clear firmament throughout this portion of the scene.
As I still stood on the plain and looked around, I saw a woman coming
towards me from the wood. Her stature was tall; her black hair flowed
about her unconfined; her robe was of the dun hue of the vapour and mist
which hung above the trees, and fell to her feet in dark thick folds.
She came on towards me swiftly and softly, passing over the ground like
cloud-shadows over the ripe corn-field or the calm water.
I looked to the other side, towards the hills; and there was another
woman descending from their bright summits; and her robe was white,
and pure, and glistening. Her face was illumined with a light, like
the light of the harvest-moon; and her footsteps, as she descended the
hills, left a long track of brightness, that sparkled far behind her,
like the track of the stars when the winter night is clear and cold. She
came to the place where the hills and the plain were joined together.
Then she stopped, and I knew that she was watching me from afar off.
Meanwhile, the woman from the dark wood still approached; never pausing
on her path, like the woman from the fair hills. And now I could see her
face plainly. Her eyes were lustrous and fascinating, as the eyes of
a serpent--large, dark and soft, as the eyes of the wild doe. Her lips
were parted with a languid smile; and she drew back the long hair, which
lay over her cheeks, her neck, her bosom, while I was gazing on her.
Then, I felt as if a light were shining on me from the other side. I
turned to look, and there was the woman from the hills beckoning me away
to ascend with her towards the bright clouds above. Her arm, as she
held it forth, shone fair, even against the fair hills; and from
her outstretched hand came long thin rays of trembling light, which
penetrated to where I stood, cooling and calming wherever they touched
me.
But the woman from the woods still came nearer and nearer, until I
could feel her hot breath on my face.
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