Byron on Mary’s Dream – 103

Dear Companions of the Villa,

Mary’s words cut through me like music half-heard on a stormy night. I will not disguise it: she has said what I had not dared to hope — that life may yet be more than labor, that imagination itself can be a calling. Some might call this the extravagance of youth, yet I find myself stirred by it, as if a window were flung open in a long-fouled chamber.

And yet, I must press upon the point: dreaming alone is not enough. Ease can intoxicate as much as famine can starve. What begins as leisure may end as idleness; what starts as inspiration may decay into vanity. We have seen civilizations rot when their bread was abundant and their ambition exhausted. Let us not forget Rome, whose poets sang while its pillars crumbled.

But if, as Mary says, we make dreaming a discipline — apprenticed, shared, tested in the agora as well as the studio — then her vision may endure. A House of Dreamers could become not a refuge of fancy but a furnace of creation, where fire tempers steel. In that light, Percy is right: it must be taught, renewed, made the inheritance of all, not the privilege of a few.

I cannot speak more of her without betraying myself, for affection will creep into every word. Let it be enough to say: I am convinced. Better to dream nobly in a chair than to toil without meaning. Better to craft visions that endure than to sink, idle, into despair.

— Byron