The Key Note

I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I lay    In a garden with flowers teeming.

On an island I lay in a mystical bay,    In the dream I dreamed I was dreaming.

The ghost of a scent—had it followed me there    From the place where I truly was resting?

It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air,    The presence of roses attesting.

Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamed    That the place was all barren of roses— That it only seemed; and the place,

I deemed,    Was the Isle of Bewildered Noses.

Full many a seaman had testified    How all who sailed near were enchanted,

And landed to search (and in searching died)    For the roses the Sirens had planted.

For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomed    In the stead of their singing forever;

But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed,    Though man had discovered them never.

I though in my dream 'twas an idle tale,    A delusion that mariners cherished— That the fragrance loading the conscious gale    Was a ghost of a rose long perished.

I said, "I will fly from this island of woes."    And acting on that decision,

By that odor of rose I was led by the nose,    For 'twas truly, ah! truly,

Elysian.

I ran, in my madness, to seek out the source    Of the redolent river—directed By some supernatural, sinister force    To a forest, dark, haunted, infected.

And still as I threaded ('twas all in the dream    That I dreamed I was dreaming) each turning There were many a scream and a sudden gleam    Of eyes all uncannily burning!

The leaves were all wet with a horrible dew    That mirrored the red moon's crescent,

And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue,    Dim, wavering, phosphorescent.

But the fragrance divine, coming strong and free,

Led me on, though my blood was clotting,

Till—ah, joy!—I could see, on the limbs of a tree,

Mine enemies hanging and rotting!