Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 4.djvu/63



I.

life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,

A boundary between the things misnamed

Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,

And a wide realm of wild reality,

And dreams in their developement have breath,

And tears, and tortures, and the touch of Joy;

They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,

They take a weight from off our waking toils,

They do divide our being; they become

A portion of ourselves as of our time,

And look like heralds of Eternity;

They pass like spirits of the past,—they speak

Like Sibyls of the future; they have power—

The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;

They make us what we were not—what they will,

And shake us with the vision that's gone by,

The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?

Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?

Creations of the mind?—The mind can make

Substance, and people planets of its own