the
thistle had something genial and refreshing in them; for there was a
spirit of hope and youth in all nature that turned everything into good.

(_Winterslow_.)

THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1785-1859

A DREAM

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the
dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored
to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking;
and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned
with a garland of white roses about her head for some great festival,
running along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. Her running
was the running of panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful
enemy in the rear. But when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps
to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from me she fled as from another
peril, and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead.
Faster and faster she ran; round a promontory of rocks she {121}
wheeled out of sight; in an instant I also wheeled round it, but only
to see the treacherous sands gathering above her head. Already her
person was buried; only the fair young head and the diadem of white
roses around it were still visible to the pitying heavens; and, last of
all, was visible one white marble arm. I saw by early twilight this
fair young head, as it was sinking down to darkness--saw this marble
arm, as it rose above her head and her treacherous grave, tossing,
faltering, rising, clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched
out from the clouds--saw this marble arm uttering her dying hope, and
then uttering her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm--these
all had sunk; at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed;
and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on earth, except my own
solitary tears, and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that,
rising again more softly, sang a requiem over the grave of the buried
child, and over her blighted dawn.

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have ever given to the
memory of those that died before the dawn, and by the treachery of
earth, our mother. But suddenly the tears and funeral bells were
hushed by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some great
king's artillery, advancing rapidly along the valleys, and heard afar
by echoes from the mountains. "Hush!" I said, as I bent my ear
earthwards to listen--"hush!--this either is the very anarchy of