'Prologue'

Prologue to The Lighthouse (May 1855), co-author Wilkie Collins.

Dickens, Charles

"Miscellaneous Papers." Volume 2. The Works of Charles Dickens. Volume 20 (1911). London: Chapman and Hall; 483-484, https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Works_of_Charles_Dickens/91s4AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=dickens+prologue+the+lighthouse&pg=PA483&printsec=frontcover.

Chapman and Hall

Dickens, Charles. 'Prologue' to The Lighthouse (May 1855), co-author Wilkie Collins. Printed in Volume 20 of The Works of Charles Dickens (1911). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. https://dickenssearch.com/verse/1855-05_The_Lighthouse_Prologue.

(Slow music all the time; unseen speaker; curtain down.)

A story of those rock where doom’d ships come

To cast them wreck’d upon the steps of home,

Where solitary men, the long year through – 

The wind their music and the brine their view – 

Warn mariners to shun the beacon-light;

A story of those rocks is here to-night.

Eddystone Lighthouse!

(Exterior view discovered.)

                                   In its ancient form,

Ere he would built it wish’d for the great storm

That shiver’d it to nothing, once again

Behold outgleaming on the angry main!

Within it are three men; to these repair

In our frail bark of Fancy, swift as air!

They are but shadows, as the rower grim

Took none by shadows in his boat with him.

So be ye shades, and, for a little space,

The real world a dream without a trace.

Return is easy. It will have ye back

Too soon to the old beaten dusty track;

For but one hour forget it. Billows, rise;

Blow winds, fall rain, be black, ye midnight skies;

And you who watch the light, arise! arise!

(Exterior view rises and discovers the scene.)