“Immur’d within the silent bower of sleep,
Two portals firm the various phantoms keep:
Of iv’ry one, whence flit, to mock the brain,
Of winged lies a light fantastic train.
The gate oppos’d, pellucid valves adorn,
And columns fair incased with polish’d horn;
Where images of truth for passage wait,
With visions manifest of future fate.”
And Virgil’s is a close copy.
In the “City of Dreams,” of Lucian, the blasphemer (whose beauties are stained by their impieties), these eternal gates are again alluded to. But the dreams in this city are all deceivers; for when a mortal enters the gates, a circle of domestic dreams in a moment unfold to him a budget of intelligence, which proves to be a tissue of lies.