[470]. "Awake, Awake!"
"I thank God for my happy dreams," wrote Sir Thomas Browne in the Religio Medici, "as I do for my good rest.... And surely it is not a melancholy conceit [or fancy] to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next as the phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day. There is an equal delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul...."
The Door of Death is made of gold,
That Mortal Eyes cannot behold;
But, when the Mortal Eyes are closed,
And cold and pale the Limbs reposed,
The Soul awakes; and, wondering sees
In her mild Hand the golden Keys:
The Grave is Heaven's golden Gate,
And rich and poor around it wait;