‘I know it is dark; and though I have lain Awake, as I guess, an hour or twain, I have not once opened the lids of my eyes, But I lie in the dark, as a blind man lies.’ Coleridge. And what is it to dream? It is to have A spiritual being. ’Tis to loose Th’ unsleeping mind from matter, and believe Miraculous and godlike gifts our own. It is to touch all nature with the wand Of faery, and be true and beautiful Amid a truer and more beautiful world. It is to need no contrast that the light About us may be visible, and joy Mistaken not for sorrow. ’Tis to love Dark eyes, and tones like a _secondo_ flute, And then be irresistible; and living In a sweet granite home, to find your love The angel that she seemed in poetry. And what is it to dream? It is to know The talisman of motion, and soar on To the high places of the upper air, Like a superior spirit. ’Tis to glide Out upon chainless wanderings, unchecked By time, or distance, or the circumstance Of waking reason. ’Tis to weave long years Of a still, midnight hour, or crowd a life Into a glowing moment; and amid The measure and the harmony that float About us like an element, to find Ithuriel’s whisper--but a breakfast bell! There’s purity in dreams. The passions lie, With the dull qualities of earth, asleep; And the low interests of life are changed For the etherial vision. We erase Dark feelings with fantastic incident; And feel cool fingers laid upon the brow Where the hot flush is burning. We retrace All early time in dreams; and hear the low, Deep cadences of prayer, and press the hand That led us to our happy slumbers then. We look on riper seasons with the eye That painted them all sunshine, and forget That we have found them shadows; and we trust Life’s broken reed as lightly, and repeat Our first young vow as movingly, again. Such dreams refresh the feelings, like a pure And high communion; for the spirit wears No fetter of a poor, particular world, And waits no cold and selfish reasoning, To measure out its fervor; but goes back Upon the purer memories, and lives o’er The brighter past, alone; and when the heart Hath buried an affection, it unclothes Its image from the drapery of the grave, And wins it to its olden tenderness.