from Canto VI

71

And that so loudly, that upstarted all
     The Oda, in a general commotion:
Matrons and maids, and those whom you may call
     Neither, came crowding like the waves of ocean,
One on the other, throughout the whole hall,
     All trembling, wondering, without the least notion,
More than I have myself, of what could make
The calm Dud so turbulently wake.

72

But wide awake she was, and round her bed,
     With floating draperies and with flying hair,
With eager eyes, and light but hurried tread,
    And bosoms, arms, and ancles glancing bare,
And bright as any meteor ever bred
     By the North Pole,—they sought her cause of care,
For she seemed agitated, flushed and frightened,
Her eye dilated and her colour heightened.

73

But what is strange—and a strong proof how great
     A blessing is sound sleep—Juanna lay
As fast as ever husband by his mate
    In holy matrimony snores away.
Not all the clamour broke her happy state
     Of slumber, ere they shook her,—so they say
At least,—and then she too unclosed her eyes,
And yawned a good deal with discreet surprize.

74

And now commenced a strict investigation,
     Which, as all spoke at once, and more than once
Conjecturing, wondering, asking a narration,
    Alike might puzzle either wit or dunce
To answer in a very clear oration.
     Dud had never passed for wanting sense,
But being “no orator as Brutus is,”
Could not at first expound what was amiss.

75

At length she said, that in a slumber sound,
     She dreamed a dream, of walking in a wood—
A “wood obscure” like that where Dante found
     Himself in at the age when all grow good;
Life’s half-way house, where dames with virtue crowned,
     Run much less risk of lovers turning rude;
And that this wood was full of pleasant fruits,
And trees of goodly growth and spreading roots;

76

And in the midst a golden apple grew,—
     A most prodigious pippin—but it hung
Rather too high and distant; that she threw
     Her glances on it, and then, longing, flung
Stones and whatever she could pick up, to
     Bring down the fruit, which still perversely clung
To its own bough, and dangled yet in sight,
But always at a most provoking height;—

77

That on a sudden, when she least had hope,
     It fell down of its own accord, before
Her feet; that her first movement was to stoop
     And pick it up, and bite it to the core;
That just as her young lip began to ope
     Upon the golden fruit the vision bore,
A bee flew out and stung her to the heart,
And so—she woke with a great scream and start.

78

All this she told with some confusion and
     Dismay, the usual consequence of dreams
Of the unpleasant kind, with none at hand
     To expound their vain and visionary gleams.
I’ve known some odd ones which seemed really planned
    Prophetically, or that which one deems
“A strange coincidence,” to use a phrase
By which such things are settled now-a-days.

79

The damsels, who had thoughts of some great harm,
     Began, as is the consequence of fear,
To scold a little at the false alarm
     That broke for nothing on their sleeping ear.
The matron too was wroth to leave her warm
     Bed for the dream she had been obliged to hear,
And chafed at poor Dud, who only sighed,
And said, that she was sorry she had cried.

80

“I’ve heard of stories of a cock and bull;
     But visions of an apple and a bee,
To take us from our natural rest, and pull
     The whole Oda from their beds at half-past three,
Would make us think the moon is at its full.
    You surely are unwell, child! we must see,
To-morrow what his Highness’s physician
Will say to this hysteric of a vision.