George Byron was a major figure of the Romantic movement expressing ‘central Romantic beliefs about dreams.’ He experienced vivid dreams himself and often wrote about them. He incorporated dream-like imagery and themes of passionate, unattainable love into his work e.g. She Walks in Beauty (1814) and The Dream (1816).
The Dream purports to be the successive stages of a recurring dream focused on Byron’s first love – a boyish passion for his neighbour and distant cousin, Mary Ann Chaworth. They met frequently during the late summer of 1803 whilst Byron was staying at Newstead Abbey – distanced away from his mother in Southwell. Thomas Moore, the contemporary Irish poet, pointed to the fact that The Dream cost its author ‘many a tear in writing’.
Stanzas ii & iii are descriptive of Annesley Park and Hall and detail two incidents of his boyish passion. The first scene takes place on the ‘cape’ of ‘Diadem Hill’ - in the Misk Hills situated between Annesley and Hucknall – about half a mile from the Hall.
“A long ridge of upland advances… like a promontory formerly crowned by a beautiful grove… From the top, see the gentle valley of Newstead diversified by woods & cornfields, and village spires, and gleams of water, and the distant tower & pinnacles of the venerable Abbey” (Washington Irving)
Still crazy in the ‘sun of love’, the ‘one beloved face’ is still shining on him – but Byron is beginning to realise that ‘her sighs are not for him’, and that ‘she is out of his reach’.
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men
Scatter’d at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs;—the hill
Was crown’d with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fix’d,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing—the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself—but the Boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young—yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The Maid was on the eve of Womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one belovéd face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had look’d
Upon it till it could not pass away;
The second scene, set in 1804, is related to the antique oratory – a small room built over the porch at Annesley Hall and looking into the courtyard. It describes their final parting. His doom has been pronounced, and his first impulse is to pen some passionate reproach, but his heart fails him at the sight of the ‘Lady of his love’, ‘serene and smiling’.
There was an ancient mansion, and before,
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake;—he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands, and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion—then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved, - she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
Byron bids her farewell with smiles on his lips but unutterable grief in his heart.
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.
Stanza iv recalls an incident of his Eastern travels – en route from Smyrna to Ephesus (1810) when ‘the heads of the camels were seen peeping above the tall reeds’.
The next episode (stanza v) depicts an imaginary scene whereby the ‘one beloved’, is the mother of a happy family - but a forsaken and unhappy wife. It confirms the unrequited nature of his first great passion and that Mary Ann Chaworth had given Byron no reason to believe she would ever marry him. Indeed, it is widely recounted that while Byron was at the Hall one day, he had heard her say to her maid, something to the effect that she could not marry him because he was “a lame bashful, boy lord” or that she “never could care for that lame boy”.
The Lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better
What could her grief be?—she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?—she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which prey’d
Upon her mind—a spectre of the past.
Stanza vi passes on to Byron’s marriage in 1815 to Anne Isabella Noel Milbanke. His bride is ‘gentle’ and ‘fair’ – but not the ‘one beloved’. The wedding is a private ceremony at Annabella’s home - Seaham Hall, County Durham. Byron is standing, before an altar, in the drawing room ‘like one forlorn’ confused by a sudden vision of ‘the Starlight of his Boyhood’.
The Wanderer was return’d. —I saw him stand
Before an Altar—with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight of his Boyhood
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been—
And so, the vision reaches its natural conclusion without the narrator physically waking up to a different reality. The speaker is left with the lingering, melancholic thoughts of the vision, which he presents almost as a reality.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality—the one
To end in madness—both in misery.
The Dream was first published as part of the volume The Prisoner of Chillon and other poems in 1816. The poem drew significant interest for its autobiographical nature and perceived insights into Byron’s youthful passions. Later in life, he declared their relationship to be “the most romantic period of his life”.
