# Poems (Shore)/Irene's Dream

IRENE'S DREAM
The following poem, whose purpose, in what has been left of it, is not very distinctly developed, is the story of a shadowy being, called Irene, combining attributes of Emily the sister who died many years before, of the writer's own self, and of her fairyland fancies. The first eighteen lines were intended as a portraiture of that sister and were afterwards wrought with some variations into the "Elegies," where Emily is more fully depicted under the name of Erinna.
After the disappearance of the stranger, Irene describes how, in her dream, she, still dwelling in the old "Fairies' Folly," becomes intimate with those mysterious beings who are supposed now to have possession of it.
II.—THE DREAM
This and the following Scenes must be supposed to be the record, unconsciously made by Irene, of what further happened in her dream.
III.—THE DREAM. MAY
Here the account of the Dream breaks off; and with it apparently the author's intention as to the final issue of the story is changed. The writer, resuming the subject after a long pause, left behind her the ideal Irene, the shadowy resemblance of her long-lost sister and herself, and determined to make the character the vehicle ​of thoughts which the observations of life had gradually stored up in her. She used it to depict various phases of woman's life and destiny in the present day. Irene dies, it is true, but not of a "Phantom of the Mind." She has been induced by Florestan to enter the world which she has never known, and where she is speedily desillusionée. Her lover deserts her and she goes through stages of anguish, which terminate in a resolution to rise above the sense of her own personal wrongs and devote herself to the betterment of the human social sphere she has entered, and in whose real and deep interest she seems to have found a substitute for the imaginary world of her girlhood. But all that is left us of this second more human part of the story consists in fragments, which we give as we find them. The first of these is apparently a conversation of Irene and a friend, probably one of the spirit-world who looks coldly yet with prescience on the passions and griefs of the humankind.
Another version, only conceived, with no attempt made to put it into words, was to represent Irene as not only forsaken but betrayed; and the author's purpose was to show how a woman may rise above the wronger and the wrong to heights whence she can look down at once on the fact, her own weakness, the social punishment and disgrace, and the unworthy one ​himself, with the just view, the calm compassion, only not contempt, of a true and deep-felt superiority. She will not dwell for ever on the past in weak and exaggerated penitence and humility; she will go forward with all the power and wisdom her past experience has given her, to a purer air and nobler objects. This would have been a difficult lesson to work out, and possibly beyond the writer's powers; she contented herself with meditating deeply on the problem as brought in real life before her.
* ↑ It is evident that Irene is here narrating her recent dream, though in this picture of the old couple she describes the figures she had really known in her childhood in that day's visit, or, as other passages would imply, that residence of some duration in the old hall called the Fairies' Folly. The woodman and his wife were actual acquaintances of the authoress in her childhood.
* ↑ In another version follow the lines—And there he saw throned on a rustic chair, With lilac-fretted robes, a sorceress-queen, For so she seemed, who stretched her regal hand Toward the twos and threes of twittering things Who perched and fluttered off, and perched again, Or for a moment crowned her pale bright hair, And at her feet his little truant lay.