I chanced upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a dream the
other night, that you shall hear of. I had been reading the "Loves of
the Angels," and went to bed with my head full of speculations,
suggested by that extraordinary legend. It had given birth to
innumerable conjectures; and, I remember, the last waking thought,
which I gave expression to on my pillow, was a sort of wonder "what
could come of it."
I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make
out--but to some celestial region. It was not the real heavens
neither--not the downright Bible heaven--but a kind of fairyland
heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air
itself, I will hope, without presumption.
Methought--what wild things dreams are!--I was present--at what would
you imagine?--at an angel's gossiping.
Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came
purely of its own head, neither you nor I know--but there lay, sure
enough, wrapt in its little cloudy swaddling bands--a Child Angel.
Sun-threads--filmy beams--ran through the celestial napery of what
seemed its princely cradle. All the winged orders hovered around,
watching when the new-born should open its yet closed eyes; which,
when it did, first one, and then the other--with a solicitude and
apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, dim the expanding
eye-lids of mortal infants, but as if to explore its path in those its
unhereditary palaces--what an inextinguishable titter that time spared
not celestial visages! Nor wanted there to my seeming--O the
inexplicable simpleness of dreams!--bowls of that cheering nectar,
--which mortals _caudle_ call below.
Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants,--stricken in years, as
it might seem,--so dexterous were those heavenly attendants to
counterfeit kindly similitudes of earth, to greet, with terrestrial
child-rites the young _present_, which earth had made to heaven.
Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full symphony as those by
which the spheres are tutored; but, as loudest instruments on earth
speak oftentimes, muffled so to accommodate their sound the better to
the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the noise of those
subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang forth, fluttering its rudiments
of pinions--but forthwith flagged and was recovered into the arms of
those full-winged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, as years
went round in heaven--a year in dreams is as a day--continually its
white shoulders put forth buds of wings, but, wanting the perfect
angelic nutriment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell
fluttering--still caught by angel hands--for ever to put forth shoots,
and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not of the unmixed
vigour of heaven.
And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it was to be called
_Ge-Urania_, because its production was of earth and heaven.
And it could not taste of death, by reason of its adoption into
immortal palaces; but it was to know weakness, and reliance, and the
shadow of human imbecility; and it went with a lame gait; but in its
goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and swiftness. Then
pity first sprang up in angelic bosoms; and yearnings (like the human)
touched them at the sight of the immortal lame one.
And with pain did then first those Intuitive Essences, with pain and
strife to their natures (not grief), put back their bright
intelligences, and reduce their ethereal minds, schooling them to
degrees and slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the gradual
illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth-born; and what
intuitive notices they could not repel (by reason that their nature
is, to know all things at once), the half-heavenly novice, by the
better part of its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding;
so that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in the instruction
of the glorious Amphibium.
But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross to breathe the air of
that super-subtile region, its portion was, and is, to be a child for
ever.
And because the human part of it might not press into the heart and
inwards of the palace of its adoption, those full-natured angels
tended it by turns in the purlieus of the palace, where were shady
groves and rivulets, like this green earth from which it came: so
Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon the entertainments of the
new-adopted.
And myriads of years rolled round (in dreams Time is nothing), and
still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual childhood, and is the Tutelar
Genius of Childhood upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely.
By the banks of the river Pison is seen, lone-sitting by the grave of
the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel Nadir loved, a Child; but not the
same which I saw in heaven. A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments;
nevertheless, a correspondency is between the child by the grave, and
that celestial orphan, whom I saw above; and the dimness of the grief
upon the heavenly, is a shadow or emblem of that which stains the
beauty of the terrestrial. And this correspondency is not to be
understood but by dreams.
And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, how that once the
angel Nadir, being exiled from his place for mortal passion,
upspringing on the wings of parental love (such power had parental
love for a moment to suspend the else-irrevocable law) appeared for a
brief instant in his station; and, depositing a wondrous Birth,
straightway disappeared, and the palaces knew him no more. And this
charge was the self-same Babe, who goeth lame and lovely--but Adah
sleepeth by the river Pison.
_Lamb._