A young Indian lover arises from a dream in the middle of the night and finds his way to his lover's chamber window without knowing fully how he arrived there. The night is dark and silent; the odors of the Champak tree fail to arouse, so too does the song of the nightingale. In the same way the speaker in the poem feels faint, his cheeks are cold and white, his heart pounds, and then he falls to the ground, where he implores his lover to help by raining down kisses on his pale lips and eyelids.
An Encounter With Somnambulism
Shelley's "The Indian Serenade"is a simple and charming lyric that tells the story of an encounter between two lovers. The poem opens with the lines "I arise from dreams of thee/In the first sweet sleep of night." What is interesting is that the narrator in the poem does not say he "awakes" from dreams but "arises" from dreams of his lover.
Now, it is possible to arise from dreams without necessarily awaking from them, thus it is possible to interpret the poem as an experience of somnambulism, or sleep walking. This implication is furthered by the lines "And a spirit in my feet/Hath led me – who knows how?" It may well be argued that an impulse to see his lover is what led the narrator to the chamber window of his lover, yet, coupled with the arising within an oneiric state, that spirit might well be an unconscious drive operating during an episode of somnambulism.
Still, further, the narrator in the poem describes in the second stanza, that the odor of the Champak (michelia champaca is a large evergreen tree native to southern and south east Asia, whose yellow flowers carry a strong fragrance) fails along with "the nightingale's complaint." Given how strongly fragrant are the flowers of the Champak, which is incidentally the only oriental element in the entire poem, their inability to arouse the poem's narrator from sleep implies a state of sensory deprivation, and in like manner the song of the nightingale, a favorite among lyric and Romantic poets, is equally impotent. Such a lack of response to sensory stimuli is consistent with somnambulism.
In the third stanza the narrator cries "Oh lift me from the grass!/ I die! I faint! I fail!" It is possible to read here the young lover's sudden and rude awakening from sleep as he finds himself lay in the grass. He dreams his lover is raining kisses upon his lips and eyelids, but, in fact, it is the rain pouring down that awakens him, because for the first time in the poem he feels the sensation of the cold in his cheeks. He is pale from a night's wandering and when suddenly jarred from his somnambulistic state he panics "My heart beats loud and fast."
Complete Text of The Indian Serenade
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream—
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;—
As I must on thine,
Oh, beloved as thou art!
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;—
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.
Reference:
Percy Bysshe Shelly. The Complete Poetical Works of Percey Bysshe Shelley Vol. I, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1905, p. 575 [public domain]
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