Analysis of The Dreamer
The lone man gazed and gazed upon his gold,
His sweat, his blood, the wage of weary days;
But now how sweet, how doubly sweet to hold
All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze.
The evening sky was sinister and cold;
The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow;
The uncommiserating land, so old,
So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe,
Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed,
Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke,
Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed,
Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke;
Then crushed with weariness and hardship crept
Into his ragged robe, and swiftly slept.
Hour after hour went by; a shadow slipped
From vasts of shadow to the camp-fire flame;
Gripping a rifle with a deadly aim,
A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes . . .
* * * * * * *
The sleeper dreamed, and lo! this was his dream:
He rode a streaming horse across a moor.
Sudden 'mid pit-black night a lightning gleam
Showed him a way-side inn, forlorn and poor.
A sullen host unbarred the creaking door,
And led him to a dim and dreary room;
Wherein he sat and poked the fire a-roar,
So that weird shadows jigged athwart the gloom.
He ordered wine. 'Od's blood! but he was tired.
What matter! Charles was crushed and George was King;
His party high in power; how he aspired!
Red guineas packed his purse, too tight to ring.
The fire-light gleamed upon his silken hose,
His silver buckles and his powdered wig.
What ho! more wine! He drank, he slowly rose.
What made the shadows dance that madcap jig?
He clutched the candle, steered his way to bed,
And in a trice was sleeping like the dead.
Across the room there crept, so shadow soft,
His sullen host, with naked knife a-gleam,
(A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes.) . . .
And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed a dream.
* * * * * *
'Twas in a ruder land, a wilder day.
A rival princeling sat upon his throne,
Within a dungeon, dark and foul he lay,
With chains that bit and festered to the bone.
They haled him harshly to a vaulted room,
Where One gazed on him with malignant eye;
And in that devil-face he read his doom,
Knowing that ere the dawn-light he must die.
Well, he was sorrow-glutted; let them bring
Their prize assassins to the bloody work.
His kingdom lost, yet would he die a King,
Fearless and proud, as when he faced the Turk.
Ah God! the glory of that great Crusade!
The bannered pomp, the gleam, the splendid urge!
The crash of reeking combat, blade to blade!
The reeling ranks, blood-avid and a-surge!
For long he thought; then feeling o'er him creep
Vast weariness, he fell into a sleep.
The cell door opened; soft the headsman came,
Within his hand a mighty axe a-gleam,
(A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes,) . . .
And as he lay, the sleeper dreamed a dream.
* * * * * *
'Twas in a land unkempt of life's red dawn;
Where in his sanded cave he dwelt alone;
Sleeping by day, or sometimes worked upon
His flint-head arrows and his knives of stone;
By night stole forth and slew the savage boar,
So that he loomed a hunter of loud fame,
And many a skin of wolf and wild-cat wore,
And counted many a flint-head to his name;
Wherefore he walked the envy of the band,
Hated and feared, but matchless in his skill.
Till lo! one night deep in that shaggy land,
He tracked a yearling bear and made his kill;
Then over-worn he rested by a stream,
And sank into a sleep too deep for dream.
Hunting his food a rival caveman crept
Through those dark woods, and marked him where he lay;
Cowered and crawled upon him as he slept,
Poising a mighty stone aloft to slay --
(A gaunt and hairy man with wolfish eyes.) . . .
* * * * * *
The great stone crashed. The Dreamer shrieked and woke,
And saw, fear-blinded, in his dripping cell,
A gaunt and hairy man, who with one stroke
Swung a great ax of steel that flashed and fell . . .
So that he woke amid his bedroom gloom,
And saw, hair-poised, a naked, thirsting knife,
A gaunt and hairy man with eyes of doom --
And then the blade plunged down to drink his life . . .
So that he woke, wrenched back his robe, and looked,
And saw beside his dying fire upstart
A gaunt and hairy man with finger crooked --
A rifle rang, a bullet searched his heart . . .
* * * * * *
The morning sky was sinister and cold.
Grotesque the Dreamer sprawled, and did not rise.
For long and long there gazed upon some gold
A gaunt and hai
Scheme | ababacacdedeff xggH ixixjkjkxlxlmnmnoo xiHI pqpqkrkrlslstutuvv giHI xqxqjgjgwxwxii fpfpH eyeykzkzx1 x1 ahax |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111010111 1111011101 1111110111 110110101 0101110001 01101101 01111 1111110011 1111010111 1101010111 1101010101 1011111111 1111000101 0111010101 10101011011 1111101101 1001010101 010101111 1 0101011111 1101010101 1011110101 1101110101 010110101 0111010101 01110101001 111110101 11011111110 1101110111 11010101101 1101111111 01011011101 1101001101 1111111101 11011111 1101011111 0001110101 010111111 1101110101 010101111 0111010101 1 1001010101 010110111 0101010111 1111010101 1111010101 1111110101 0011011111 1011011111 1111010111 1101010101 1101111101 1001111101 1101011101 011010101 0111010111 0101110001 11111101011 1100110101 0111010101 0111010101 010101111 0111010101 1 1001011111 1011011101 1011101101 1111001111 1111010101 1111010111 01001110111 01010011111 111010101 100111011 1111101101 1101010111 1101110101 0101011111 101101011 1111011111 101011111 101010111 010101111 1 0111010101 0111001101 0101011111 1011111101 111101111 011101011 0101011111 0101111111 1111111101 0101110101 01010111010 0101010111 1 0101110001 0101010111 1101110111 0101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,262 |
Words | 817 |
Sentences | 82 |
Stanzas | 15 |
Stanza Lengths | 14, 4, 1, 18, 4, 1, 18, 4, 1, 14, 5, 1, 12, 1, 4 |
Lines Amount | 102 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 218 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 56 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 19, 2023
- 4:06 min read
- 129 Views
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"The Dreamer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32533/the-dreamer>.
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