The night was very still, and I made a roaring fire; so
I soon got warm, and at last could put my clothes on again. Then I
strapped my blanket round me, and went to sleep as near the fire as I
could.
I dreamed that there was an organ placed in my master's wool-shed: the
wool-shed faded away, and the organ seemed to grow and grow amid a blaze
of brilliant light, till it became like a golden city upon the side of a
mountain, with rows upon rows of pipes set in cliffs and precipices, one
above the other, and in mysterious caverns, like that of Fingal, within
whose depths I could see the burnished pillars gleaming. In the front
there was a flight of lofty terraces, at the top of which I could see a
man with his head buried forward towards a key-board, and his body
swaying from side to side amid the storm of huge arpeggioed harmonies
that came crashing overhead and round. Then there was one who touched me
on the shoulder, and said, "Do you not see? it is Handel";--but I had
hardly apprehended, and was trying to scale the terraces, and get near
him, when I awoke, dazzled with the vividness and distinctness of the
dream.
A piece of wood had burned through, and the ends had fallen into the
ashes with a blaze: this, I supposed, had both given me my dream and
robbed me of it.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56