The Day-Dream - Part I - Prologue
The Day-Dream - Part I - Prologue - meaning Summary
Dreaming Frames a Tale
The speaker addresses Lady Flora during a quiet, intimate moment, watching her sleep and letting his own reverie shift into a remembered legend. He invites her to join by adding a stitch to an embroidery while he recounts the vision, framing the forthcoming tale as born from gentle daydream. The prologue also playfully warns that her attentive gaze can unsettle the poet’s words and the poem’s orderly rhythms.
Read Complete AnalysesO, Lady Flora, let me speak: A pleasant hour has past away While, dreaming on your damask cheek, The dewy sister-eyelids lay. As by the lattice you reclined, I went thro’ many wayward moods To see you dreaming—and, behind, A summer crisp with shining woods. And I too dream’d, until at last Across my fancy, brooding warm, The reflex of a legend past, And loosely settled into form. And would you have the thought I had, And see the vision that I saw, Then take the broidery-frame, and add A crimson to the quaint Macaw, And I will tell it. Turn your face, Nor look with that too-earnest eye— The rhymes are dazzled from their place, And order’d words asunder fly.
First published in 1842, but written in 1835.
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