Towards democracy

428 Towards Democracy

A Dream or Human LIFE

DREAMED that I saw a wild and lonely promontory

on which the sea beat ; and the waves dashed against

rocky cliffs and bastions, and flew in spray over the edges of

them, and clouds drifted on overhead, mingling with the sea-

mist below in one veil which wrapped and shadowed all, save

where now and then a watery beam from the sun glanced through.

And in the midst among the rocks and crags was (it 3eemed to me) an ancient ancient fane, like some far forgotten Abbey Church built in an elder world—nor was it easy to say whether it was indeed built up of ordinary masonry, or whether by some rude art it had been shapen from the very crags themselves. But round about it and over the promontory on all sides the rocks and clifis were carven in strange formssea-monsters half submerged beneath the waves, and serpents stretching along the bases of the cliffs, and evil shapes thrown up on land and grasping at the rocks with iron claws; and beside them forms heroic of men and women on ledges here and there and pinnacles, through the mist halfshown—as it might have been S. George against the dragon, or Andromeda to the rock-face chained, or Perseus with the Gorgon’s head in hand.

But who they really were I could not well see. Only ever as the spray and wind wreathed by, the figures as in mortal combat seemed to move and menace each other, and serpents writhed and sea-beasts plunged through waves. And from the ancient fane came the sound of music continually—