DREAMS.
‘I know it is dark; and though I have lain
Awake, as I guess, an hour or twain,
I have not once opened the lids of my eyes,
But I lie in the dark, as a blind man lies.’
Coleridge.
And what is it to dream? It is to have
A spiritual being. ’Tis to loose
Th’ unsleeping mind from matter, and believe
Miraculous and godlike gifts our own.
It is to touch all nature with the wand
Of faery, and be true and beautiful
Amid a truer and more beautiful world.
It is to need no contrast that the light
About us may be visible, and joy
Mistaken not for sorrow. ’Tis to love
Dark eyes, and tones like a secondo flute,
And then be irresistible; and living
In a sweet granite home, to find your love
The angel that she seemed in poetry.
And what is it to dream? It is to know
The talisman of motion, and soar on
To the high places of the upper air,
Like a superior spirit. ’Tis to glide
Out upon chainless wanderings, unchecked
By time, or distance, or the circumstance
Of waking reason. ’Tis to weave long years
Of a still, midnight hour, or crowd a life
Into a glowing moment; and amid
The measure and the harmony that float
About us like an element, to find
Ithuriel’s whisper—but a breakfast bell!
There’s purity in dreams. The passions lie,
With the dull qualities of earth, asleep;
And the low interests of life are changed
For the etherial vision. We erase
Dark feelings with fantastic incident;
And feel cool fingers laid upon the brow
Where the hot flush is burning. We retrace
All early time in dreams; and hear the low,
Deep cadences of prayer, and press the hand
That led us to our happy slumbers then.
We look on riper seasons with the eye
That painted them all sunshine, and forget
That we have found them shadows; and we trust
Life’s broken reed as lightly, and repeat
Our first young vow as movingly, again.
Such dreams refresh the feelings, like a pure
And high communion; for the spirit wears
No fetter of a poor, particular world,
And waits no cold and selfish reasoning,
To measure out its fervor; but goes back
Upon the purer memories, and lives o’er
The brighter past, alone; and when the heart
Hath buried an affection, it unclothes
Its image from the drapery of the grave,
And wins it to its olden tenderness.
I’ve read of one in story, who had laid
His young love in the grave. The seasons came
And went, like shadows over him, for years;
And then the world grew brighter, and he heard
A melody in nature’s goings on;
And a sweet cousin’s voice, that tempted him
Into the sunshine and the air, became
The music of his happiness, and so
He married her. One night she was awake,
And gazing on his features as the moon
Shone through the casement on them. A large tear
Stole from his eye, and as his lips were stirred
With the low murmur of his dream, she caught
The name of the departed. He awoke,
And she reproached him tearfully for love
Kept secret in his heart; and then he kissed
Her tears away, and told her that his love
Was faithfully her own, although in dreams
An angel came to him sometimes, and woke
A buried thought of one as beautiful.