DREAMS.
"Knowest thou what thou art, in the hour of sleep? Who is the illuminator of the soul? Who hath seen, who knoweth him?
Taliessin.
Revere thyself! for thou art wonderful
Even in thy passiveness. Hail, heir of Heaven!
Immortal mind! that when the body sleeps
Doth roam with unseal'd eye, on tireless wing,
Where Memory hath no chart, and Reason finds
No pole-star for her compass. Guest divine!
Our earthly nature bows itself to thee,
Putting its ear of clay unto the sigh
Of thy disturbed visions, if perchance
It win some whisper of thy glorious birth,
And deathless heritage.
Oh, dreams are dear
To those whom waking life hath surfeited
With dull monotony. 'Tis sweet when Day
Hath been a weariness, and Evening's hand
Like some lean miser, greedily doth clutch
The flowers that Morning brought us, to lie down,
And breathe a fragrance that they never knew,
Pressing our fingers to the thornless Rose,
That springs where'er we tread.
'Tis very sweet
To 'scape from stern Reality, who sits
Like some starch beldame, all precise and old,
And sheer intolerant, and on the wing
Of radiant Fancy, soar unblam'd and wild,
And limitless. When niggard Fortune makes
Our pillow stony, like the patriarch's bed
Who slept at Bethel, gentle dreams do plant
An airy ladder for the angels' feet,
Changing our hard couch for the gate of Heaven.
They feed us on ambrosia, till we loath
Our household bread.
To traverse all untir'd
Broad realms, more bright than fabled Araby,
To hear unearthly music, to plunge deep
In seas of bliss, to make the tyrant-grave
Unlock its treasure-valve, and yield the forms
Whose loss we wept, back to our glad embrace,
To wear the tomb's white drapery, yet to live,
And hold unshrinking pastime with the dead,
To catch clear glimpses of fair streets of gold,
And harpers harping on the eternal hills,
These are the gifts of dreams, and we would speak
Most reverently of their high ministry.
—See, life is but a dream. Awake! Awake!
Break off the trance of vanity, and look
With keen, undazzled eye, above the cloud
That canopies man's hopes. Yea! hear the voice
Of Deity, that 'mid his hour of sleep,
In the still baptism of his dewy dreams,
Doth bear such witness of the undying soul
As breath'd o'er Jordan's wave, "Behold my Son!"