The Day-Dream - Part VI - The Departure
The Day-Dream - Part VI - The Departure - meaning Summary
A Lovers' Twilight Journey
The poem depicts a princess who, embraced by her lover, leaves familiar life to follow him across hills and shifting light. Repeated sleep-and-kiss images suggest awakening, longing, and a move from twilight into morning and back into night, blending dream and reality. Her obedience and wonder culminate in the lover’s invitation to his father’s court, implying a journey toward new social or emotional horizons beyond the known world.
Read Complete Analyses1 And on her lover’s arm she leant, And round her waist she felt it fold, And far across the hills they went In that new world which is the old: Across the hills and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, And deep into the dying day The happy princess follow’d him. 2 “I’d sleep another hundred years, O love, for such another kiss;” “O wake for ever, love,” she hears, “O love, ’twas such as this and this.” And o’er them many a sliding star, And many a merry wind was borne, And, stream’d thro’ many a golden bar, The twilight melted into morn. 3 “O eyes long laid in happy sleep!” “O happy sleep, that lightly fled!” “O happy kiss, that woke thy sleep!” “O love, thy kiss would wake the dead!” And o’er them many a flowing range Of vapour buoy’d the crescent-bark, And, rapt thro’ many a rosy change, The twilight died into the dark. 4 “A hundred summers! can it be? And whither goest thou, tell me where?” “O seek my father’s court with me! For there are greater wonders there.” And o’er the hills, and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night across the day, Thro’ all the world she follow’d him.
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