A Song Composed in a Dream

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

IN our dreams we have all made what seemed at the time to be surprisingly good jokes, and upon waking have remembered them long enough to examine them and be disappointed. Nine in ten of them were without point or humor, and the tenth was not up to our daylight best. Our dream - tales have seldom been as good at breakfast as they were in the dream ; the same has been the case with our dream - orations and banquet impromptus and our dream-poems. They have almost always had one very prominent defect: the disposition to wander from the subject. In the case of a tale, the wanderings were likely to begin as early as the middle of it and go on wandering around and missing trains from that point to the end ; and in the case of a poem, it might start with a definite thought, but all the chances were against its sticking to it through six lines.

I have dreamed in verse with a strange frequency, considering that I am a person who does not meddle with verse at all in the daytime. With exactly the same frequency I have found, upon waking up and examining, that if in disregard of custom the dream-verses began with a definite thought they always lost their grip upon it early, and wandered off into a wide nowhere and fell over the edge. But at last the rule is broken : I have dreamed in verse which began with a definite idea and stuck to it. The prose part of the dream, too, was sane and orderly, as you will see. In my dream, I was in a great and sumptuous opera house ; the floor and all the galleries and boxes were filled with finely dressed people. A stately man in evening dress came out on the vast and otherwise unoccupied stage, and stood there awhile apparently musing. The faces and eyes of the audience gave him an almost adoring welcome, — by which sign I knew that he was of high renown and acceptance, — but not a sound broke the pervading stillness ; there was not a movement, not a whisper, not the rustle of a gown ; the people sat in the profound hush and gazed in a rapt expectancy at the man. Then followed a surprise for me ; for he presently burst out in a sudden and mighty and uplifting enthusiasm of song that seemed to fill the house with an almost visible splendor and glory, and my breath stood still and my heart stopped beating, so moving it was, so magnificent, and so astonishing in the unexpectedness of it. He carried this rich and wonderful baritone storm through in a grand triumphal progress to a thunderous close, then stopped and stood silent before the panting and excited audience with a hand uplifted, — his head tilted sidewise and upward, — stood so as much as a minute, perhaps two, with the look of one who has lost himself in a reverie and is not conscious of what he is doing ; and again the house sat tranced, with devouring and expectant eyes riveted upon him. And now he began to sing again, this time in a tenor voice, and in a minor key. It was soft and low, and infinitely sweet, exquisitely sweet, and heart-breakingly plaintive and pathetic. One could see by the faces that the people knew this song ; that they loved it ; and one’s instinct said that it was what they had come to hear, and that the glorious tempest which had preceded it had its thought-out purpose ; that it was a preparation, a lurid and gorgeous and rock-riving volcanic background for this tender and opaline twilight. The song was an imploring and pleading and beseeching supplication, — that was apparent enough before I had noticed the words. I knew the tune, it was familiar to me ; I recognized it as a favorite, but for the moment I could not place it. And no wonder : it was Die Wacht am Rhein ! It was that martial and tremendous musical cyclone doing duty in this sweet and moving and entrancing way as an invocation. It stirred the house to the depths, and me with it ; and it seemed to me that the right and loveliest expression and employment of that great tune had never been found till now. When I began to notice the words I found that they framed an Invocation to Liberty. When I woke I was still in possession of the words, and they were rational, but they soon began to fade. But not so with the substance ; that remained with me. It was clearly defined, and easily rememberable. By the time I was done wondering over the matter and ready to go to sleep again, the wording had suffered more or less damage, and only the last two lines remained unimpaired in my memory. When I got up an hour later I still had those lines, and was able to patch the others together in a phrasing which was not far away from the original. Here is the result. You will perceive that there is an idea and a purpose in the simple verses, and that it is consistently adhered to and never lost sight of : —

When a chorus of robust Germans, properly inspired with patriotism and beer, sing Die Wacht am Rhein, they deliver the last two lines of that mighty song with a thunder-crash. But when the man in the dream sang his Invocation his voice began to recede into the distance, as it were, with the first of his last four lines, and to gradually diminish in volume and augment in imploring eloquence and unearthly sweetness and pathos to the end. By that time the vast concourse of people had reverently risen and were standing ; standing motionless, with heads bent forward, tensely listening ; they still stood in that impressive attitude one or two minutes after the last faint sound had expired — then vanished, like a light blown out!