The Dream

I

Our life is twofold; sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed 
Death and existence; Sleep hathits own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development 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 spirites of the past. -They speak 
Like sibyls f 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 thats gone by,
the dread of Vanish;d 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
with beings brighter than have been and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dream'd 
Perchance in sleep for ---in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years, 
And curdles a long life into one hour. 

							Lord Byron

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