Dream book

“ Dreams are regarded by the superstitious simply for what they predicate as about to happen; in other words, they are important to the credulous only as omens of coming events. Itinerant hawkers and small village shops drive a considerable trade in "Dream Books," or "Books of Fate," which profess to interpret every dream and to explain every omen, whether of good or evil import. ”

“ It will be more profitable to limit the inquiry to a [255] few groups of beliefs, which have been more or less fully elaborated into systems. Of these the interpretation of dreams offers a promising harvest of analogies. This practice has a venerable history, the study of which would constitute an interesting task for the patient student of the by-paths of human culture. I shall draw only from the contemporaneous survivals of this ancient lore, the dream-books purchasable in every city and village. ”

“ Chapter VIII.—Some notion of the prevalence of a popular belief in the omens to be derived from dreams may be obtained from the fact that dream books are still enough in demand to warrant their publication. ”

“ Thou art thought by many to be only a land of fantasy and of shadows. But it is not so. Dreams, for the most part, are fantastic; but all are not so. Nearer are we to the world of spirits, in sleep; and, at times, angels come to us with lessons of wisdom, darkly veiled under similitude, or written in characters of light.
I passed into dream-land; but my thoughts went on in the same current. "Tame, dull, and commonplace!" I felt the condemnation more strongly than before. ”

“ And burn in fiery dreams each thought till thrice refined
It may have power to mirror the mighty Master's mind.
My spirit would have beauty to draw thee nigh, my bird.
I seek the lips that spake thee, sung thee, a starry word.
I'd breathe anew that music, and lure thee from afar,
And still thy quivering pinions at peace in thy own star.
THE VISION OF LOVE
The twilight fleeted away in pearl on the stream,
And night, like a diamond dome, stood still in our dream.
Your eyes like burnished stones or as stars were bright
With the sudden vision that made us one with the night. ”

“ If we brood over the alternative that the dream was self-begotten fantasy, no less must we make obeisance to the dreamer of dreams. Who is this who flashes on the inner eye landscapes as living as those we see in nature? The winds blow cool upon the body in dream: the dew is on the grass: the clouds fleet over the sky: we float in air and see all things from an angle of vision of which on waking we have no experience: we move in unknown cities and hurry on secret missions. ”

“ Harbury. [Louise Driscoll]
All the men of Harbury go down to the sea in ships,
The wind upon their faces, the salt upon their lips.
The little boys of Harbury when they are laid to sleep,
Dream of masts and cabins and the wonders of the deep.
The women-folk of Harbury have eyes like the sea,
Wide with watching wonder, deep with mystery. ”

“ The dreams that come floating through our sleep, and fill the dormitory with visions of love or terror—what are they? Random freaks of the fancy? Or is sleep but one long dream, of which we see only fragments, and remember still less? Who shall explain the mystery of that loosening of the soul and body, of which night after night whispers to us, but which day after day is unthought of? Reverie, sleep, trance—such are the stages between the world of man and the world of spirits. Dreaming but deepens as we advance. ”

“ Most pleasant is it to dream, and to know we dream! By sweet volition we keep ourselves half asleep and half awake; and all our visions of thought, as they go swimming along, partake at once of reality and imagination. Fiction and truth—clouds, shadows, phantoms and phantasms—ether, sunshine, substantial forms and sounds that have a being, blending together in a scene created by us, and partly impressed upon us, and which one motion of the head on the pillow may dissolve, or deepen into more oppressive delight! ”

“ And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow— You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. ”

“ Each time the vision returns, is it not more enchanting than before, as a recurring dream of the night in which we behold places we can never see except through dream-haze, gilded by a phantom sun? It is sadder each time, this fancy; for it brings with it the memory of older apparitions, as of places visited in childhood, in that sweet dim time so long ago that its dreams and realities are mingled together in strange confusion, as clouds with waters. ”

“ Children yet, the tale to hear, Eager eye and willing ear, Lovingly shall nestle near. In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: Ever drifting down the stream— Lingering in the golden gleam— Life, what is it but a dream? ”

“ Time and space are annihilated, gravity is suspended, and we are joyfully borne up in the air, as it were in the arms of angels; we are brought into a deeper communion with Nature, and in dreams a man listens to the arguments of his dog with as little surprise as Balaam heard the reproaches of his ass. The unexpected [279] limitations of our dream world, the exclusion of so many elements which are present even unconsciously in waking life, impart a splendid freedom and ease to the intellectual operations of the sleeping mind, and an extravagant romance, a poignant tragedy, to our emotions. ”

“ Dream landscapes come back again and again, as if they waited there forever, substantial, and we were the transient comers. Some, in ether dreams, shrink always from the same green waves, the same black, open mine, and two have now and then been found who saw on sleep journeys places that words repictured curiously alike. The fantasies may be patchwork of poems, plays, and paintings long forgotten, but when they rise in their compelling fusion they owe no debt to the lumber attic of the subconscious. ”

“ Some where the myrtle weeps
⁠On Roman graves.
And pale young faces gleam
⁠With solemn eyes;
Like a remember'd dream
⁠The dead arise:
In the red track of war
⁠The restless sweep;
In sunlit graves afar
⁠The loved ones sleep. ”

“ Or, as indeed it seems, that some wild dream
Had wrapp'd me in its horrid tangled maze.
It is a dream,—it must be,—o'er my brain
Such strange bewildering seenes in memory crowd,
As are not, cannot be reality ”

“ Here are our shapes that play dream love quarrel,
Here are our dreams (and if there were dreamers,
If we were not like our visions a dream)
All is not over—is all then over?
Here is the well and the delicate water
Far below gleaming, the starred white branches
Fragrant with flowers. Here is the noontide,
Even the grasses grow at the edges.
What then is gone? If we were the dreamers
(And not a dream) then all must be over.
I an old man cold, fruitless and lonely,
Watch by the water, which you cannot see. ”

“ O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimful of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow door That opening, letting in, lets out no more. Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though cold in death: Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago! ”

“ In waking dreams we pass the day,
And dreams the hours of darkness sway,
(Day-dreams or night-dreams—who can guess
Whether their truth is more or less?)
Perchance even Death is but a dream,
And fleshless skulls with visions teem.
The Gods we pray to and adore
Are shadows of our dreams—no more ”

“ And those old dreams of our ancestors in the childhood of England, they are fantastic enough, no doubt, and unreal, but yet they are most true and most practical, if we but use them as parables and symbols of human feeling and everlasting truth. What, after all, is any event of earth, palpable as it may seem, but, like them, a shadow and a ghostly dream, till it has touched our hearts, till we have found out and obeyed its spiritual lesson? ”

“ And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted dreams,
And into glory peep.
Ascension Hymn. H. VAUGHAN.
When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,
And in a dream as in a fairy bark
Drift on and on through the enchanted dark
To purple daybreak—little thought we pay
To that sweet bitter world we know by day.
Sonnet: Sleep. T.B. ALDRICH.
Dreams are the children of an idle brain. ”

“ For reason, much too strong for fantasy.
Therefore thou waked'st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it.
Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths, and fables histories;
Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,
Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest. ”

“ THE LAST DREAM One more dream in the slow night watches, One more sleep when the world is dumb, And his soul leans out to the sweet wild snatches Of song that up from dreamland come. Pale, pale face with a golden setting, Deep, deep glow of stedfast eyes; Form of one there is no forgetting, Wandering out of Paradise. Breath of balm, and a languor falling Out of the gleam of a sunset sky ”

“ If certain hours on their climb up the long ladder of time
Turned my confusion to rhyme, drove me to dare an attempt,
If by fair chance I might seem sometimes abreast of my theme,
Was I translating a dream? Was it a dream that you dreamt?
High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes;
All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true. ”

“ For how many times in sleep has not the same dream come to me as a whispered message from another world, from her grave even—and on awakening I always seemed to know that her journey through life was at an end. ”

“ Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,
Returning home on summer nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the slow punt swings round:
And leaning backwards in a pensive dream,
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream:
And then they land, and thou art seen no more. ”

“ A dream is a reflex view of life,
A blending of fancy with solemn truth,
A retrospection of mundane strife,
Old age re-living the scenes of youth.
Our dreams are but mirrors for our desires;
The proud ambition, the lofty aim
Achieved in our sleep, but the night expires
And the dull existence plods on the same.
A dream is a feeble ray of light,
A rift in the shadows through which we grope,
An evidence that eternal night
Can never extinguish the star of hope. ”

“ From trophies of mart and stage, I would fly to the woods' low rustle
And the meadows' kindly page. Let me dream as of old by the river,
And be loved by the dream away; For the dreamer lives for ever,
And a toiler dies in a day. ”

“ The loveliness that is the secret shape
Of once-seen, sweet and oft-dreamed loveliness,
The brain that builds shape, memory, dream and all ...
A white moon stares Time's thinning fabric through,
And makes substantial insubstantial seem,
And shapes immortal mortal as a dream;
And eye and brain flicker as shadows do
Restlessly dancing on a cloudy wall. ”

“ And, whether wake or dreaming, this I know, How dream-wise human glories come and go; Whose momentary tenure not to break, Walking as one who knows he soon may wake, So fairly carry the full cup, so well Disorder'd insolence and passion quell, That there be nothing after to upbraid Dreamer or doer in the part he play'd, Whether To-morrow's dawn shall break the spell, Or the Last Trumpet of the eternal Day, When Dreaming with the Night shall pass away. ”

“ Or should you say, ’tis not in us to take
Heed in both ways, to sleep and be awake:
Perhaps the things by eye and mind survey’d
Are in their quick alternate efforts made;
For by this mixture of the truth, the dream
Will in the morning fresh and vivid seem.
“Dreams are like portraits, and we find they please 850
Because they are confess’d resemblances;
But those strange night-mare visions we compare
To waxen figures—they too real are,
97Too much a very truth, and are so just
To life and death, they pain us or disgust. ”

“ They (the thoughts and passions) may bring forth a flower called 'love in idleness'—a flower which changes before you are aware of it. The dream gives us reality reversed, but reversed in such a way that there is always the possibility that it may, in an unguarded moment, take veritable shape. ”

“ Now, the explanation of this mystery, I incline to think, may possibly lie in the hypothesis I have suggested; namely, that in profound, and what appears to us generally to have been dreamless sleep, we are clear-seers. The map of coming events lies open before us, the spirit surveys it; but with the awaking of the sensuous organs, this dream-life, with its aerial excursions, passes away, and we are translated into our other sphere of existence. ”

“ III. Light in the Dream You who have spent your life in bringing truth to illusion, reality to fantasy, have walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy that seemed to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness deeper. Your goal was darkness, in which no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth forever, in complete insanity. ”