On Dreaming
When slumber seals our weary eyes,
The busy fancy wakeful keeps;
The scenes which then before us rise,
Prove something in us never sleeps.
As in another world we seem,
A new creation of our own,
All appears real, though a dream,
And all familiar, though unknown.
Sometimes the mind beholds again
The past day's business in review,
Resumes the pleasure or the pain;
And sometimes all we meet is new.
What schemes we form, what pains we take!
We fight, we run, we fly, we fall;
But all is ended when we wake,