The Mind
Dream-Pedlary
From Poems, Posthumous and Collected (1851)
If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?
A cottage lone and still,
With bowers nigh,
Shadowy, my woes to still,
Until I die.
Such pearl from Life's fresh crown
Fain would I shake me down.
Were dreams to have at will,
This would best heal my ill,
This would I buy.
Codex Note
Two ten-line stanzas turn on the dream-seller's cry. Asked what he would buy, the speaker chooses only a lonely cottage in which to wait for death: a small, quiet poem, and the best known of Beddoes's lyrics.
Cite this poem
MLA
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell. “Dream-Pedlary.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/beddoes/0/.
Chicago
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell. “Dream-Pedlary.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/beddoes/0/.
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