Dreams

Mysterious shapes, with wands of joy and pain, Which seize us unaware in helpless sleep, And lead us to the houses where we keep Our secrets hid, well barred by every chain That we can forge and bind: the crime whose stain Is 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 rest Ends earth’s short day, as, on the last faint gleam Of 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!