Christina Rossetti’s “Dream Land” features four octaves, each of which is structured by combining two quatrains with a unique rime-scheme, AAABCCCD. This unusual structure melds with theme in nearly perfect ambience. The speaker dramatizes an experience amazingly similar to samadhi, the ineffable state of consciousness wherein the individual realizes Bliss.
First Stanza: “Where sunless rivers weep”
The speaker declaims in third person, as if reporting the experience of some one else. The reader, however, may infer that the experience, in fact, belongs to the speaker. In the first quatrain, the speaker likens her meditative awareness to “sunless rivers” whose waters are sinking into the depth of the ocean.
She maintains that this “sleep”—a metaphor for meditation—is a “charmed sleep.” It is charmed because it reveals a deep superconscious awareness that engenders absolute peace. The speaker then admonishes anyone who would try to disturb her, “Awake her not.” The speaker wishes to preserve this meditative state as long as she can.
In deep meditation, the advanced yoga devotee sees the spiritual eye in the forehead, a white star engulfed in blue inside a golden circle of light. The speaker says, “Led by a single star, / She came from very far.” This “single star” refers to the spiritual eye. The speaker reports that she “came from very far / To seek where shadows are / Her pleasant lot.” She has prayed and meditated deeply in order to arrive at her goal, “her pleasant lot.”
Second Stanza: “She left the rosy morn”
The speaker confirms that in order to gain her consciousness of inner awareness, she had to give up outward, worldly things; thus, she “left the rosy morn, / She left the fields of corn.” She exchanged these things, which also represent the earth (coccygeal) center in the lower spine, for the solitude of “twilight” where she can hear the water sound of the sacral center. Her consciousness is traveling upward from the lower centers.
As her awareness evolves, she seems to be peering “through a veil” seeing the color of the “sky,” again representing the spiritual eye, made pale. She “hears the nightingale,” which probably indicates that she is still aware of the earth center.
Third Stanza: “Rest, rest, a perfect rest”
The speaker then avers that the feeling she is experiencing is that of “a perfect rest” that has spread from her “brow” and over her “breast” and thus the rest of the physical person. She metaphorically faces the west, seeing “the purple land,” while her consciousness continues to deepen. Averring that she “cannot see the grain” nor can she “feel the rain / Upon her hand,” she demonstrates that her physical body has become unresponsive to physical stimuli.
Fourth Stanza: “Rest, rest, for evermore”
The speaker revels in the peace she is experiencing and longs to remain in this state of consciousness. Likening her comfort to reclining on “a mossy shore,” she implies that her heart is comforted by a rest so deep it extends to “the heart’s core.” She hopes to remain in this consciousness “till time shall cease.”
Intuitively, she senses that nothing can disturb her in this state of mind: “no pain shall wake” her from this “sleep,” and this kind of “night” shall not be interrupted by morning. The only ending will be “joy” surpassing her “perfect peace.”
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