Dreaming

“ For your tale makes the dreaming whereby yet they live
The dreams of the day with their hopes of redressing,
The dreams of the night with the kisses they give,
The dreams of the dawn wherein death and hope strive.
Ah, what shall we say then, but that earth threatened often
Shall live on for ever that such things may be,
That the dry seed shall quicken, the hard earth shall soften,
And the spring-bearing birds flutter north o'er the sea,
That earth's garden may bloom round my love's feet and me? ”

“ Exhaled like an unconscious thought
When poets, dreaming unperplexed,
Dream that they dream of nought.
Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed,
Or to such serene balance brought
p. 15That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms,
And sleep in one another’s arms. ”

“ Hush, not a whisper! Let your heart alone go dreaming.
Dream unto dream may pass: deep in the heart alone
Murmurs the Mighty One his solemn undertone. ”

“ And so, his senses gradually wrapt
In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark;
That singest like an angel in the clouds! ”

“ Dreaming,” he adds, “also arises from the secret activity of the spirit in the innermost sensuous organs of the brain, busying the fancy with subjective sensuous images, the objective conscious day-life giving place to the creative dominion of the poetical genius, to which night becomes day, and universal nature its theatre of action; and thus the super-sensuous or transcendent nature of the spirit becomes more manifest in dreaming than in the waking state. ”

“ Now the question of the philosopher has always been: which is the true dream, the sleeping dream or the waking dream? The fact that the one is continuous of itself while the other is not, and that we always fall into a new dream but always wake to the same reality, has given a permanent value to the waking or external life, and an equally fictitious one to the interior or dreaming life. ”

“ Dreams — are well — but Waking's better,
If One wake at morn —
If One wake at Midnight — better —
Dreaming — of the Dawn —
Sweeter — the Surmising Robins — ”

“ These dreams may be of use, but generally the resumption of bodily activity destroys the meaning, perverts the image, and reduces all to confusion. But the great fact of all dreaming is that some one perceives and feels therein, and this is one of the arguments for the inner person’s existence. ”

“ But in this retirement of the mind from the senses, it often retains a yet more loose and incoherent manner of thinking, which we call dreaming. ”

“ The habit of relating their dreams, which is universal, greatly promotes the habit of dreaming itself, and hence their sleeping hours are characterised by almost as much intercourse with the dead as their waking are with the living. ”

“ "The years that are gone seem like dreams—if one might go on sleeping and dreaming—but to wake up and find—oh! well! perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like something fashioned in a dream;
Such Forms as from their covert peep
When earthly cares are laid asleep!
Yet, dream and vision as thou art,
I bless thee with a human heart:
God shield thee to thy latest years! ”

“ And if in our sleep and dreams we perceive, more distinctly than in the day life, signs of the highest beauty and the purest bliss, - should we not then give them our closest attention?
And this I would now point out to you, dear reader, as the first new idea, strange - till now - to the present world, the first thought-child pulsing with life and future promise, born of the profound union of my experience and contemplation:
The solution of the secret of our lives lies in our dreams. ”

“ At the sight she felt herself swooning—it was a dream, she thought, a dream that must suddenly change, and yet it was burning itself into her heart and brain with a reality which no dream can possess. ”

“ See the dreams come flying,
Circle where your body lies,
Like a south wind sighing.
Dream, and dream, and sweetly sleep,
Dreams are free from sinning:
Dream, Ah! better dream than weep,
Dream of better winning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Oh, it is all a dreadful dream!
Scurvy and cold and death and dearth;
I will awake to warmth and gleam,
Silvery seas and greening earth.
Life is a dream, its wakening,
Death, gentle shadow of God’s wing.... ”

“ In my dreams I have seen blood in the skies, and heard sounds of battle in the air and earth. Dreams of themselves, I know, are generally without sign or significance; but when the spirit of a dream remains on the mind through the waking hours, as it has on mine, I know it has a meaning. Something has been hurrying me to be ready for the great event. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My tears bedewed the corporals on which, with the eyes of faith, I beheld the disguised lover of mankind whom I had drawn from heaven to my hands. These are dreams, indeed,—the illusions of an over-heated fancy; but dreams they are which some of the noblest minds have dreamt through life without waking—dreams which, while passing vividly before the mental eye, must entirely wrap up the soul of every one who is neither more nor less than a man. ”

“ Our dream is longer, but 'tis mixed with tears.
For we are dreamers all, and only those
Fully awake, who dwell where naught deceives.
So, when time's vision o'er, you reach the land
Which hath no need of sun, or waning moon
To give it light, how sweet to hear your child
Bid you "good morning" with his cherub tongue. ”

“ But when at last we penetrate into its real meaning we find ourselves at a bound in the very heart of the dreamer’s secrets, and find to our astonishment that an apparently senseless dream is quite full of sense, and deals with extraordinarily important and serious problems of the soul. ”

“ And she clung to every jewelled hour, as sometimes in those rare dreams of perfect happiness that visit the human brain the dreamer clings to his sleep, and fears the moment of his awakening, which he is dimly conscious is approaching. ”

“ Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And, ere a man hath power to say, ‘Behold!’
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
HERMIA.
If then true lovers have ever cross’d,
It stands as an edict in destiny. ”

“ THE DREAM
Love, if I weep it will not matter,
⁠And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
⁠But it is good to feel you there.
Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,—
⁠White and awful the moonlight reached
Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere
⁠There was a shutter loose,—it screeched! ”

“ If, finally, we compare the point of departure of the dream, the dream thoughts, with the content of the naively related dream, we see that the dream is nothing else than the concealed fulfillment of a repressed wish. ”

“ Doth ope the eyelids of the soul, and thence
Lifteth a heavier cloud than that whereby
He veils the vision of the fleshly eye.
And not alone by dreams doth Sleep make known
The sealèd things and covert—not alone
In visions of the night do mortals hear
The fatal feet and whispering wings draw near;
But dimly and in darkness doth the soul
Drink of the streams of slumber as they roll,
And win fine secrets from their waters deep:
Yea, of a truth, the spirit doth grow in sleep. ”

“ Know you not that our dreams create nothing, and that they are never anything else than confused reminiscences and fantastic combinations of the realities of our waking consciousness? What then is that mysterious waking during which we have seen the eternal, the infinite, the perfection of goodness, the fulness of joy, all those sublime images which come to haunt our spirit during the dream of life? Recollections of our origin! ”

“ With me it is a delightful dream, from which I dread to be awakened, yet feel that it is but a dream; while she, bewildered, amazed at those vague emotions which throb impetuously in her unpractised heart, resigns herself unconsciously to the sweetest of all deliriums, and makes no effort to dissolve the vision! ”

“ I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour, Preventing shadow until the moon prevail; I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven, Each circling each with vague unearthly cry, Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar ”

“ But there must be intensity. Are you thrilled? Do you stretch out your arms and dream the beauty? It is only when you gaze into a reality empty of the voices of life that I would wake you to bid you dream better. ”

“ Are dreams after all the only certain joys of life? A poet’s fancies,—a painter’s visions—the cloud-castles of a boy’s imaginings—all dreams!—and only such dreamers can be called happy. Neither Fate nor Fortune can destroy their pleasure,—they make sport of kings and hold great nations as the merest toys of thought—oh sublime audacity of Vision! ”

“ To awake to life the mind within the mind!’
‘O charms, seductions and divine delights!
All through the radiant yellow summer nights,
Dreams, hardly dreams, that yield or e’er they’re done,
To the bright fact, my day, my risen sun! ”

“ They say the woman had a fiend at heart,
And afterwards—Hush, hush, I dream’d a dream.
How cold the air blows; how the night grows dark,
Wrapping me round in blackness. Darker too
Grows the deep night within. ”