To wander in her sleep, through ways unknown,
Guideless and dark.”
Cast. And now, Sir Knight, deign to look on the other side of the shield. Answer me with sincerity,—if your words be true, is not this a high privilege of imaginative minds, to lift themselves out of the gloomy atmosphere of this world of woe; to soar with fancy, not to drudge with fact? How do I envy a romantic dreamer, like him of whom Master Edmund Spenser writes, —
“——at length, some wonted slepe doth crowne
His new falne lids, dreames straight, tenne pound to one,
Out steps some faëry with quick motion,
And tells him wonders of some flourie vale.”
Sleep is indeed the reality of another existence.
Astr. So breathed the thought of Heraclitus, in words like these,—that “all men, whilst they are awake, are in one common world; but that each, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.” The fairies are his boon and chosen compeers, and the sylphs are as much his handmaidens, as those around the toilet of Belinda. We are indeed the happy children, and, like them, our existence is a dream of felicity,—one long and happy thought of the present, with no reflection or forethought to mar its blisses.
Then the shades and memory of departed friends and lovers, are they not around us as true and as beautiful as when they lived? The common sentiment of enamoured dreamers is —