Dreams


 * |||||||||||||| || = Dreams     =

=
 **  Edgar Allan Poe  **   ===== || || ||


 * || || Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awakening, till the beam

Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.

Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

’Twere better than the cold reality

Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,

And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,

A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.

But should it be—that dream eternally

Continuing—as dreams have been to me

In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,

’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.

For I have revell’d when the sun was bright

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light,

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">And loveliness,—have left my very heart

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">In climes of mine imagining, apart

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">From mine own home, with beings that have been

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">’Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">From my remembrance shall not pass—some power

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Came o’er me in the night, and left behind

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Its image on my spirit—or the moon

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass. <span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">I // have been // happy, tho’ [but] in a dream.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">I have been happy—and I love the theme:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Of semblance with reality which brings

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">To the delirious eye, more lovely things

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Of Paradise and Love—and all our own!

<span style="font-family: Georgia,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline;">Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known. || || ||