Pocahontas and Other Poems (New York)/Dreams
DREAMS.
Revere the mind, so full of mystery,
Even in its passive hours.
Behold it roam,
With unseal'd eye and wide unfolded wing,
While the tired body sleeps. Immortal guest!
Our earthly nature bows itself to thee,
Pressing its ear of flesh unto the sigh
Of thy perturbed visions, if perchance
It hear some murmur of thy birth divine,
Thy deathless heritage.
Ah! dreams are dear
To those whom waking life hath surfeited
With dull monotony. When the long day
Wends to its close, and stealthy evening steals,
Like some lean miser, greedily to snatch
Hope's wreath that morning gave, is it not sweet
To close our eyelids, and to find the rose
That hides no thorn, the gold that knows no rust,
Scatter'd where'er we tread? Is it not sweet
To 'scape from stern reality, and glide
Where'er wild fancy marks her fairy way
Unlimited? If adverse fortune make
Our pillow stony, like the patriarch's bed
At lonely Bethel, do not pitying dreams
Plant a bright ladder for the angels' feet,
And change our hard couch to the gate of Heaven,
And feed our souls on manna, till they loathe
Their household bread?
To traverse all unblamed
Broad realms, more bright than fabled Araby;
To hear unearthly music; to inhale
Ambrosial fragrance from the spicy groves
That never fade; to see the tyrant tomb
Unlock its treasure-valve, and freely yield
The loved, the lost, back to our glad embrace;
To catch clear glimpses of the streets of gold,
And harpers harping mid the eternal hills,
These are the pastimes which the mind doth take
While its poor clay companion slumbers deep,
Weary and worn.
If thou in wintry climes
Shouldst exiled roam, thy very heart's blood chill'd,
Lay but thy cold hand on a winged dream,
And it shall bear thee straight with bounding pulse
To drink the sunbeams of thine own blue skies,
Where the young cottage children freely fill
Their pinafores with flowers.
Should ocean swell,
Or the eternal mountains stretch their bars
'Tween thee and thy loved home, how strangely sweet
To touch the talisman of dreams, and sit
Again on thine own sofa, hand in hand
With the most loved, thy children near thy side
At their untiring play, the shaded lamp
Shedding its quiet beam, while now and then
The clock upon the mantelpiece doth speak,
To register the diamond sands of time,
Made brighter by thy joys.
So mayst thou hold
Existence in two hemispheres, and be
Happy in both; yea, in each separate zone
Have thine own castles, and revisit them
Whene'er it pleaseth thee.
But more than this:
If thou wilt seek the fellowship of dreams,
And fearless yield thee to their loving sway,
And make them friends, they'll swiftly bear thee up
From star to star, and let thee hear the rush
Of angel-wings, upon God's errands speeding;
And, while they make some silver cloud thy car,
Will whispering tell thee that the unslumbering soul
Wears immortality upon its crest,
And, by its very power to soar with them,
Proves that it cannot die.