Part 6 (1/2)

Yet reic spell which binds poetry together is broken The splendour of art and the soaring ination are lessened because no phantooal Gone is the mute permission or connivance which emboldens the soul to ather in harvests of achievees yet unborn Blot out dreams, and the blind lose one of their chief comforts; for in the visions of sleep they behold their belief in the seeing ht beyond the blank, narrow night justified Nay, our conception of immortality is shaken Faith, the motive-power of human life, flickers out Before such vacancy and bareness the shocks of wrecked worlds were indeed welcoht independently of us and in spite of us that the soul

” cord, And rush exultant on the Infinite”

DREAMS AND REALITY

XIV

DREAMS AND REALITY

IT is astonishi+ng to think how our real wide-aorld revolves around the shadowy unrealities of Dreamland Despite all that we say about the inconsequence of dreareatest hopes upon them Nay, we build upon thehtful poems, few noble works of art or any system of philosophy in which there is not evidence that dream-fantasies symbolize truths concealed by phenons, and illogical connections occur gives plausibility to the theory which Sir Arthur Mitchell and other scientificis uncontrolled and undirected by the will The will--the inhibiting and guiding power--finds rest and refreshment in sleep, while the mind, like a barque without rudder or compass, drifts aih, these fantasies and inter-twistings of thought are to be found in great iinative poems like Spenser's ”Faerie Queene” La and the work of the i of the episode in the cave of Mah to say that the whole episode is a copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep; it is--in some sort, but what a copy! Let the ht with the spectacle of so and try it by his waking judg and yet so coherent, when it came under cool examination, shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashah but in sleep, a monster for a God The transitions in this episode are every whit as violent as in the ment ratifies they between the world of our waking life and the world of dreaht, I lived in a sort of perpetual dream The testimony of parents and friends atchedthe actuality of those early, obscure years ofin thealone mark the transition from reality to Dreamland As near as I can tell, asleep or awake I only felt with nify with the terht It is true that my bodily sensations were extremely acute; but beyond a crude connection with physical wants they are not associated or directed They had little relation to each other, to ives identity and continuity to experience--ca existence at the sa of self-consciousness Before that less sensations rioted, and if thought existed, it was so vague and inconsequent, it cannot be an, I dreamed I know that I must have dreas fell suddenly, heavily I feltafire, or I fell into a tub of cold water Once I smelt bananas, and the odour in , before I was dressed, I went to the sideboard to look for the bananas There were no bananas, and no odour of bananas anywhere! My life was in fact a drea state and the sleeping one is still marked In both states I see, but not with my eyes I hear, but not with my ears I speak, and am spoken to, without the sound of a voice I am moved to pleasure by visions of ineffable beauty which I have never beheld in the physical world Once in a dream I held in my hand a pearl

The one I saw in ination It was a sazed into its shi+ deeps, my soul was flooded with an ecstasy of tenderness, and I was filled onder as one who should for the first time look into the cool, sweet heart of a rose My pearl was dew and fire, the velvety green of moss, the soft whiteness of lilies, and the distilled hues and sweetness of a thousand roses It seemed to me, the soul of beauty was dissolved in its crystal bosothens my conviction that the world which the estions is fairer than the world of the senses The splendour of the sunsethills is wonderful But the sunset of the inner vision brings purer delight because it is the worshi+pful blending of all the beauty that we have known and desired

I believe that I am more fortunate in my dreams than most people; for as I think back over h we naturally recall rotesque and fantastic adventures in Slumberland I have friends, however, whose dreaued and bruised, and they tell ht There is one friend who declares that she has never had a felicitous drearind and worry of the day invade the sweet domain of sleep and weary her with incessant, profitless effort I feel very sorry for this friend, and perhaps it is hardly fair to insist upon the pleasure of drea in the presence of one whose dream-experience is so unhappy Still, it is true that my dreams have uses asfor the strange, the weird, the ghostlike is gratified in dreams They carry me out of the accusto of an eye they snatch the burden from my shoulder, the trivial task from my hand and the pain and disappointment from my heart, and I behold the lovely face of my dream It dances round me with merry measure and darts hither and thither in happy abandon Sudden, sweet fancies spring forth frohtful surprises old and rubies

I like to think that in dreaer than our own We see it as a little child, or as a savage who visits a civilized nation Thoughts are is nobler and wiser than any we have known thrill us between heart-beats For one fleeting night a princelier nature captures us, and we becoreat as our aspirations I daresay we return to the little world of our daily activities with as distorted a half-memory of e have seen as that of the African who visited England, and afterwards said he had been in a huge hill which carried hiht, whether we are asleep or awake, no doubt depends largely upon our idiosyncrasies, constitution, habits, and mental capacity But whatever may be the nature of our dreaous to those which go on when the mind is not held to attention by the will

A WAKING DREAM

XV

A WAKING DREAM

I HAVE sat for hours in a sort of reverie, letting my mind have its ithout inhibition and direction, and idly noted down the incessant beat of thought upon thought, ihts make all kinds of connections, wind in and out, trace concentric circles, and break up in eddies of fantasy, just as in dreams One day I had a literary frolic with a certain set of thoughts which dropped in for an afternoon call I wrote for three or four hours as they arrived, and the resulting record is much like a dreahts came in arm-in-arm--I drea dreahts, while in the dreaes I catch broken threads fro leaves which have floated on a slumber-wind from a tree that I cannot identify In this reverie I held the key to the coive ies exist between thoughts when they are not directed and the behaviour of real drea

I had an essay to write I wanted my mind fresh and obedient, and all its handmaidens ready to hold up my hands in the task I intended to discourse learnedly upon my educational experiences, and I was unusually anxious to doplan in rave, wise, and abounding in ideas Moreover, it was to have an acadeestive of sheepskin, and the reader was to be duly iown I shut myself up in the study, resolved to beat out on the keys of my typewriter this immortal chapter ofAsia with the splendid army which his father Philip had disciplined than I was of finding hts obedient Myback to it in an hour that it looked not for me My situation was similar to that of the master ent into a far country and expected on his ho he found his servants giving a party Confusion was ra and the babble of ues, so that the voice of the h he shouted and beat upon the gate, it remained closed

So it ith ; but the vassals of thought would not rally to my standard Each had his arm round the waist of a fair partner, and I know not ild tunes ”put life andto do I looked about helplessly upon reat retinue, and realized that it is not the possession of a thing but the ability to use it which is of value I settled back inthere, ”idle as a painted shi+p upon a painted ocean,” watching s to say without taking the trouble to write them I felt like Alice in Wonderland when she ran at full speed with the red queen and never passed anything or got anywhere

The merry frolic went on hts

There were sad thoughts and happy thoughts, thoughts suited to every clie and nation, silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of nothing, good thoughts, ihts

There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashi+on An antic jester in green and gold led the dance The guests followed no order or precedent No two thoughts were related to each other even by the fortieth cousinshi+p There was not so ht behaved like a newly created poet

”His ical lyrics--oh, if I only had written them down! Pell-mell they ca With bacchanal song and shout they came, and eye hath not since beheld confusion worse confounded

Shut your eyes, and see thehts and ladies of my revel