Anne Bronte Dreams by Billy Shannon

Billy Shannon | Anne Brontë Dreams

ceramic base, mixed media decoupage

10 x 14 cm

Dreams

by Anne Brontë

While on my lonely couch I lie,

I seldom feel myself alone,

For fancy fills my dreaming eye

With scenes and pleasures of its own.

Then I may cherish at my will

The friends I love, and dream they love me;

But drooping hopes rise glorious still,

And days of sorrow still are happy.

I bless the gentle breeze that brings

The wanderer’s welcome sound to me,

And sleep, that flings her fairy wings

O’er all I love, where’er they be.

But then, by sudden impulse drawn,

I leave my couch to greet the morn,

And oft I hear the soft wind sigh,

And see the white clouds float along—

The very wind I used to hear,

The very sky I gazed upon;

And oft I think, though far away,

That they might share the scene with me.

But dreams are false and fleeting things,

And dreams are true as truth can be—

And though my heart may break with longing,

It finds in dreams its liberty.

This piece was made for Field Trip’s DEATH MASK exhibition. Each work began on one of Clairy Laurence’s ceramic death mask bases, reimagined by thirty artists in their own way.