Wakefulness

“ And far below the long vale stretched.
⁠As a sleeper she did seem
That after some brief restlessness
⁠Has now begun to dream.
(All day the wakefulness of men,
⁠Their lives and labours brief,
Have broken her long troubled sleep.
⁠Now, evening brings relief.) ”

“ The night air is calmer, when silence reigns, hence bodily impressions are made in sleep, when slight internal movements are felt more than in wakefulness, and such movements produce in the imagination images from which the future may be foreseen. ”

“ SEG. Oh, rather pray for me a sleep so fast As shall obliterate dream and waking too. (Exit into the tower.) CLO. So sleep; sleep fast: and sleep away those two Night-potions, and the waking dream between Which dream thou must believe; and, if to see Again, poor Segismund! that dream must be.— And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death? ”

“ Then at last a new time—the time of waking; short, sharp, and not pleasant, as wakings often are.
Sleep and dreams exist on this condition—that no one wake the dreamer.
And now life takes us up between her finger and thumb, shakes us furiously, till our poor nodding head is well-nigh rolled from our shoulders, and she sets us down a little hard on the bare earth, bruised and sore, but preternaturally wide awake.
We have said in our days of dreaming, “Injustice and wrong are a seeming; pain is a shadow. Our God, He is real, He who made all things, and He only is Love.” ”

“ When hours unnoted pass us by,
From such we wake and weep.
We wake,—but not to sleep again;
The heart has lost its youth,—
The morning light which wakes us then,
Calm, cold, and stern, is Truth. ”

“ As if, in sleep, our individual fell into the infinite mind, and at the moment of awakening we found ourselves on the confines of the latter. On awakening, we resume our enterprise, take up our bodies, and become limited minds again. We meet and converse with those bodies which we have previously animated. There is a moment in the dawn when the darkness of the night is dissipated, and before the exhalations of the day begin to rise, when we see all things more truly than at any other time. ”

“ Brethren, see to it that that awaking be for you the beholding of what you have loved, the finding, in the sober certainty of waking bliss, of all the objects which have been your visions of delight in the sleep of earth.
This life of ours hides more than it reveals. The day shows the sky as solitary but for wandering clouds that cover its blue emptiness. But the night peoples its waste places with stars, and fills all its abysses with blazing glories. 'If light so much conceals, wherefore not life?' Let us hold fast by a deeper wisdom than is born of sense ”

“ I sanctify The soothing power that in a painless swoon Laps my weak limbs, giving me strength to lie, Till sacred dawn increases unto noon: Then when, from highest meridional height, The sun devolves, and cooling breezes wake, It is a comfort and divine delight The weary bed exhausted to forsake, And bathe my temples in the blessed air. But when day wanes, and the wind-moaning night Deepens to darkness, then thy virtue rare, O dream-creative liquid! brings delight, Thy silver drops, diffusive, kindly steep The senses in the golden juice of sleep. ”

“ 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 image of the morning-star doth rest,
So in this stillness thou beholdest only
Thine image in the waters of my breast.
Still, still with thee! as to each new born morning
A fresh and solemn splendor still is given,
So does this blessèd consciousness awaking
Breathe each day nearness unto thee and heaven.
When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber,
Its closing eyes look up to thee in prayer;
Sweet the repose beneath thy wings o'ershading,
But sweeter still, to wake and find thee there.
So shall it be at last, in that bright morning,
When the soul waketh, and life's shadows flee ”

“ Awake, thou sleeper, and I will give thee light; awake, thou dreamer, who fanciest that the sinful works of darkness can give thee any real profit, any real pleasure; awake, thou sleep-walker, who art going about the world in a dream, groping thy way on from day to day and year to year, only kept from fall and ruin by God’s guiding and preserving mercy. Open thine eyes, and let in the great eternal loving light, wherein God beholds everything which He has made, and behold it is very good. ”

“ Sleep shakes his wings free of us as the day-star quivers overhead, and the quiet visions of the night pass from the kindly darkness and look out upon the new day through our lustrous eyes. There is no waking to the sombre laws that once set us limits in the world; there is no border 'twixt our dreams and our life: on flows the level tide through waking and through sleeping, through light and shadow, day by day and night by night. ”

“ When sunset light has faded from our sight, And darkness comes to tell us of the night, We sleep, refreshed from earthly care and sorrow, To waken to another hopeful morrow.
When sun and stars shall no more please our sight, And darkness comes to tell us of the night, We sleep, unmindful of earth’s joy and sorrow, To waken to a never-ending morrow.
[Pg 93]
LIFE’S DAY.
When the morn has breathed her story, And the noon of life is past, When the sunset’s deepening glory Fills the waiting soul at last ”

“ Nor open weary eyes,
For waking is but weeping
And Sleep is Paradise.
Love is a cadence trailing
Where broken music falls,
A hapless shadow sailing
Across deserted walls.
So still my heart lie sleeping
Till love's hot sun be set,
For waking is but weeping.
Asleep—sad eyes forget. IN THE GRAVE
Dear Love—do you wake in that land where my waking is done? ”

“ I wonder whether you have ever thought of this darkness, which would be so dreadful did it last long, as one of the blessings which God has given us. The night is the time of sleep and rest for animals and plants, as well as for weary men and women, and children who can get tired even with their play. God watches over you while you sleep—"the darkness and the light are both alike" to Him—and you get up in the morning fresh, and ready for a new day. ”

“ I know I must be near awake, Knowing I dream; or, if not at my voice, Then vanish at the clapping of my hands, Or take this foolish fellow for your sport: Dressing me up in visionary glories, Which the first air of waking consciousness Scatters as fast as from the almander— That, waking one fine morning in full flower, One rougher insurrection of the breeze Of all her sudden honour disadorns To the last blossom, and she stands again The winter-naked scare-crow that she was! ”

“ At dawn spiritual truth, like the atmosphere, is more transparent, and our organs, like the young leaves, drink in the light more eagerly, breathe in more ether, and less of things earthly. If night and the starry sky speak to the meditative soul of God, of eternity and the infinite, the dawn is the time for projects, for resolutions, for the birth of action. While the silence and the “sad serenity of the azure vault,” incline the soul to self-recollection, the vigor and gayety of nature spread into the heart and make it eager for life and living. Spring is upon us. ”

“ The night is far spent and the day is at hand
THE WAKING To be young is to dream, and I dreamed no more;
I had smothered my heart as the fighter can:
I toiled, and I looked not behind or before—
I was stone; but I waked with the heart of a man.
By the soul at her lips, by the light of her eyes,
I dreamed a new dream as the sleeper can,
That the heavenly folly of youth was wise—
I was stone; but I waked with the heart of a man. ”

“ To arouse suddenly from a sound sleep in the woods at dawn while this chant is in progress, is like awakening in another sphere, where sings the choir celestial. We slip from sleep into the heaven of song, and it requires another awakening to bring us to consciousness of this actual world about us. ”

“ Who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious, the sub-conscious to dawning consciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. ”

“ We bring the flowers you loved so well, The pure white rose and lily bell; Their sweets break not this fearful spell; They do not wake you early! [91]
We sing your songs; we pause to hear Your bird-like voice rise full and clear; Ah! dull and heavy is your ear; We cannot wake you early.
You will not wake? Then may your sleep, If it be long, be calm and deep; Thank God, the eyes forget to weep That do not waken early! [92] BLEST
Dec. 1865
Sinking to thine eternal rest, O dying Year! ”

“ Having drank of immortality all night, the genius enters [Pg 254] eagerly upon the day's task, impatient of any impertinences jogging the full glass.... Sleep and see; wake, and report the nocturnal spectacle. Sleep, like travel, enriches, refreshes, by varying the day's perspective, showing us the night side of the globe we traverse day by day. We make transits too swift for our wakeful senses to follow; pass from solar to lunar consciousness in a twinkling; lapse from forehead and face to occupy our lower parts, and recover, as far as permitted, the keys of genesis and of the fore worlds. ”

“ Then, after a period of comatosity, comes a shock of awakening life, the breath of a new spirit passes over the earth, the sun smites with provocative ray, and the sleeping soul stretches itself, and suddenly finds its case too strait for it. ”

“ Oh! would to God, beloved, to-day That merry shout or gleeful play Might drive your heavy sleep away, And bid you waken early.
But vain are all our prayers and cries; From your low bed you will not rise; No kisses falling on your eyes, Can waken you right early.
Bright are the skies above your bed, And through the elm-boughs overhead Are golden sunbeams softly shed, That wake you late nor early. ”

“ A thousand times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of the golden dawn, with the secret word riding before thee, with the armies of the grave behind thee,—seen thee sinking, rising, raving, despairing; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep have I seen thee followed by God's angel through storms, through desert seas, through the darkness of quicksands, through dreams and the dreadful revelations that are in dreams ”

“ When the time comes for us to wake out of the world’s sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the night? Singing of birds, first, broken and low, as, not to dying eyes, but eyes that wake to life, “the casement slowly grows a glimmering square;” ”

“ With a wild and passing thrill,
Wake the cord whose spirit lingers,
Sleeping silently and still,
Fast asleep and almost dying,
Through my days of changeless pain,
Till I dream the strings are lying,
Never to be waked again. ”

“ I said to myself, 'During sleep, you give to visions a reality and consistence, and you have no suspicion of their untruth. On awakening, you are made aware that they were nothing but visions. What assurance have you that all you feel and know when you are awake does actually exist? ”

“ Many sleep who should keep themselves awake and waken the world. Earth's actors change earth's scenes; and the curtain of human life should be lifted on reality, on that which outweighs time; on duty done and life perfected, wherein joy is real and fadeless. ”

“ These sublime words of faith were on his lips as he closed his eyes, when sleep came to him, and dreams with sleep—busy, swift-winged dreams, proving that though the body may rest, the soul must ever be awake. ”

“ Waking in the early dawn he felt, ere yet his senses fully came, a happy sense of something, he knew not what, a rosy shadow of coming joy, such as will, only with more intensity, fall upon our quickened faculties when, death ended, our souls begin to stir as we awaken to Eternity. ”

“ Our aimless activity, our clutchings at the air, must appear to higher beings like the clutching of dying men at the bed-clothes.
The spirit awakes and will awake when the light of the senses goes out, just as sleepers awake when the night-light is extinguished. ”

“ And when the rays of the morning rouse him from sleep and call him back to new life, when he sees the Sun, as he says, stretching out his golden arms to bless the world and rescue it from the terror of darkness, he exclaims, 'Arise, our life, our spirit has come back! ”

“ Rightly he said “asleep”—the long sleep that is the sweetest and happiest in that it knows no waking here; the long sweet sleep that no evil dreams disturb; the sleep after which the eyes open upon the light of immortality, and the weary heart rests upon the bosom of its God. ”

“ This interval of being and repose is momentary: she will awake but only to perish at the spectacle of my ingratitude—she will awake only to the consciousness of instantly impending death. When she again sleeps she will wake no more. ”

“ As the cycles went their upward way the heroic figures of the dawn reappear. Some have passed before us; others in the same spirit and power will follow: for the new day a rearisen sun and morning stars to herald it. When it comes let it find us, not drowsy after our night in time, but awake, prepared and ready to go forth from the house of sleep, to stretch hands to the light, to live and labor in joy, having the Gods for our guides and friends. ”

“ But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
⁠When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
⁠⁠And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
⁠With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
⁠⁠I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. ”

“ 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. ”