The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844: Volume 23, Number 5Various
History
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844: Volume 23, Number 5
Various
Periodicals
It is not that I can hope to describe my sensations of that night, in such
a manner as to impart them to the contemplative spirit that may read this
sketch, and to afford pleasure at all comparable with that which I
enjoyed; but I have thought that I might by the recital awaken some
gratifying recollections of still higher flittings of the imagination into
the regions of unlimited Fancy; where the pleasure has been, as was mine,
alike unbounded and pure.
In an Existence like ours, where so much is ideal; where so many things
are feared, that never come to pass; hoped for, that are never realized;
enjoyed, that are impalpable to sense; where that, which by common
convention is called substantial and real, is very far inferior to that
which is falsely termed illusory and vain; where life borders on
immortality; and the spiritual world so closely overhangs the natural,
that it is as difficult to separate them as it is in Switzerland to know
which is Alps and which is Heaven;--there may oftentimes be much pleasure,
perhaps some instruction, in a DREAM.
What should we say of dreams, if our eyes could but once have been opened
upon the bright intellectual fancies, and anticipations; or upon the
spiritual movements, of some of those by the side of whose supine and
deserted forms it may have been our privilege to watch; but who, on waking
into restored consciousness, remember not what they may have seen, or
imagined, or may perhaps have accomplished, in their sleep?
How often, within the compass of our own minds, do we not find thoughts
and images that spring from sources that we cannot trace! Have we not more
than once been called upon to perform some act of life, important to
ourselves, or perchance to others; or been in some incidental circle of
friends, or of persons who were strangers until then; or walked upon some
lonely path in Europe--all for the first time as we suppose, and yet have
we not had it irresistibly borne in upon our minds, that we have done all
this before! signed the same paper in the same presence! heard the same
voices speak the same words! noticed the same faces in the same positions!
or recognized the mountains perhaps, and the trees, the landscape, the
rocks, the very brook, as acquaintances of old; although the broad
Atlantic had never yet been crossed by us before--except in spirit!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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