“O! but those words, that voice so truly known!”—— 810 “No doubt, dear lady, they were all thine own; Memory for thee thy brother’s form portray’d; It was thy fear the awful warning made: Thy former doubts of a religious kind Account for all these wanderings of the mind.”— “But then, how different when my father came, These could not in their nature be the same!”— “Yes, all are dreams; but some as we awake Fly off at once, and no impression make; Others are felt, and ere they quit the brain 820 Make such impression that they come again, As half familiar thoughts, and half unknown, And scarcely recollected as our own. For half a day abide some vulgar dreams, And give our grandams and our nurses themes; Others, more strong, abiding figures draw Upon the brain, and we assert ‘I saw’; And then [will] fancy on the organs place A powerful likeness of a form and face. “Yet more—in some strong passion’s troubled reign, 830 Or when the fever’d blood inflames the brain, At once the outward and the inward eye The real object and the fancied spy. The eye is open, and the sense is true, And therefore they the outward object view; But, while the real sense is fix’d on these, The power within its own creation sees; And these, when mingled in the mind, create Those striking visions which our dreamers state; For knowing that is true that met the sight, 840 They think the judgment of the fancy right.—— Your frequent talk of dreams has made me turn My mind on them, and these the facts I learn. “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, Too much a very truth, and are so just To life and death, they pain us or disgust. “Hence, from your mind these idle visions shake, And O! my love, to happiness awake!”— “It _was_ a warning, tempter! from the dead; And, wedding thee, I should to misery wed!”— “False and injurious! What! unjust to thee? 860 O! hear the vows of Love—it cannot be; What, I forbear to bless thee—I forego That first great blessing of existence? No! Did every ghost that terror saw arise With such prediction, I should say it lies; But none there are—a mighty gulf between Hides the ideal world from objects seen; We know not where unbodied spirits dwell, But this we know, they are invisible;— Yet I have one that fain would dwell with thee, 870 And always with thy purer spirit be.”— “O! leave me, George!”— “To take the field, and die: