Words

LAST night it was long before I could let sleep overtake me. Words, mere words, pursued me so hotly that sleep lagged far behind.

To-day, as I sit in the sun and write, the words are but my none-too-ready servants. They come at my bidding, yet slowly, grudgingly, as if they were sullen laborers, well-nigh on the verge of a strike. I wish that last night I could have been writing and writing. The thing I might have written would be like a great unearthly jewel, flaming the seven colors, sharper than a two-edged sword. For a host of words was all about me. crowding, urging, flashing, making outcry.

It is a hard thing to relate clearly. If I say, “Last night I was full of splendor, last night I was ready with great speech,” one would scarce believe me. Where is it all fled, then ? And alas, I do not know. Yet I cannot hold my peace in the matter. For an hour I was overwhelmed by triumphant words.

I have read that the time between waking and sleeping is the time for visions to slide across the quiet lids, and charm away the sense with a riot of symbolic color and shape. This has been well proved in my own small fashion, for many a night I have lain quiescent, watching a weird procession that flowered magically out of the half-dark in my eyes. Blossoms and birds and fish, brilliant with color; wide deserts, high seas, blazing sunsets flecked with masts and leaves to make them blaze the more; wood paths and glimmering brooks; and faces upon faces, mad, distorted, scarred, or pale and beautiful. And I have seen far stranger things: once a red-capped peasant unearthing a chest of treasure under a waning moon; once a silent company of folk in dull ancient garb, lifting what seemed to be many dead bodies from a great wagon that stood beside a field of sunken graves ; and countless curious pictures more.

I am aware that this motley procession arises from no singularity of my own brain, and am become accustomed to it; but last night, the hosting of the words seemed novel, disquieting, terrible, and glorious. Doubtless it was but another manifestation of the old half-occult mental power, but to me it was strange.

An army of words, in companies and battalions and charging ranks, gave chase to me. It was as if I ran, ran, forever ran, and the words were forever upon me: strong words, delicate words, glittering and gloomy words; those that cry aloud and those that whisper close; plodders to a funeral march, dancers to a twinkling tarantella. Now a phrase, round and robustious as from a demagogue’s mouth, clapped me upon the back; and then a line of lazy lovely poetry clasped my throat like a woman’s hand. An old refrain meriting tears, and a proud thought with a windy buffeting breath, trod close upon each other.

And they were all gloriously new: bold as the sun, unused as the dawn, full of might; not the poor empty echoing shells listened to for countless noisy centuries, but live things, young as Adam in the garden, urgent as the tides of the sea.

Had they but stayed a little with me, how the world would bow down and listen! How I would shout in the ears of the fat rich folk who grow deafer day by day; how I would sing for the thin poor folk who are in peril of forgetting music through very lack. How I would flame and sparkle and work splendid miracles on earth!

Alackaday! so is it with dreams. The power is gone with the night. At last I fell asleep, and awoke to the sun, happy, clear of head, strong of body, but dumb as ever before.

I only know that somewhere between waking and sleeping, between the light and the dark, the great words live untarnished and unworn. Mighty are the men who can snare them and carry them forth to the light of day; but it must suffice me to have felt their pursuit even in a feverish half-dream.