Poems (Jackson)/Dreams
For works with similar titles, see Dreams.
DREAMS.
YSTERIOUS shapes, with wands of joy and pain,Which seize us unaware in helpless sleep,And lead us to the houses where we keepOur secrets hid, well barred by every chain That we can forge and bind: the crime whose stainIs slowly fading 'neath the tears we weep;Dead bliss which, dead, can make our pulses leap—Oh, cruelty! To make these live again!They say that death is sleep, and heaven's restEnds earth's short day, as, on the last faint gleamOf sun, our nights shut down, and we are blest.Let this, then, be of heaven's joy the test,The proof if heaven be, or only seem,That we forever choose what we will dream!