The Text

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 odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart,–
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.

Romantic Vision

The “Indian Serenade” is a romantic hyperbole in the form of a song expressing sensationalism depicted by a lovesick lover. Central to the vision is “poetic madness.” Shelley uses the keyword “serenade” , a song rendered at night in the open air for a beloved, in most cases, beneath the lover’s window. Shelley turns the serenader’s forlorn feeling from the absence of his beloved into a melody which, incidentally, has become his immortal song.

The romantic vision is brought into sharp perspective by the succession of dreamlike images through the use of apostrophe. Apostrophizing the lady conspires the illusion of night establishing a figurative contrast between the “nightingale’s complaint” and the flaming heart desire, the longing to see the beloved.

In the first stanza the poetic speaker narrates rather naively how he responds to his dreams of his beloved “in the first sweet sleep of night when the winds are breathing low and the stars are shining bright.” These dreams inspire the “spirit” in his feet, an inexplicable magnetic force equivalent to “I can’t help it” that guides him to the beloved’s chamber window.

Shelley uses the star as a visual symbol for joy which, with its quickening or harmonizing light, is a source of delight. Intensifying the poetic ardor, Shelley establishes a contrast between the brilliance of the stars and ” the dark, the silent stream.”

In the second stanza, one sees the night in bloom as the champak perfumes the air with subtle seduction. Mother Earth gives birth to odors, colors, and sounds as Shelley weaves a hypnotic poem, a mosaic of sense impressions enhanced by the use of the word “champak” , a spicy Indian tree.

In the last stanza Shelley conjures a momentous spell from a psychic deep where the human soul is taken to the brink of the incomprehensible as the singer invokes an unseen beloved. To play up the erotic paradigm of the poem, Shelley weaves the tapestry of confusion of feelings, through intentional juggling of the human senses, the aim of which is actually to play up ecstasy and confusion when a person is in love. Which comes first: the dying, the fainting, or the failing? Shelley draws his romantic vision from the volcanic fires inside man, his passion. His body on fire, the serenader explodes with uncontrollable pleasure, a seeming firework no less sensational than the rush of a rocket or the whiz of a local whistle bomb as he interjects in the last two lines: “Oh, press it close to thine own again, /Where it will break at last/. ###