I Was Unspeakably Soothed And Rejoiced, Even After
I Awoke, Because In Dreams We Never Deceive Ourselves, Nor Are
Deceived, And This Seemed To Have The Authority Of A Final
Judgment.
We bless and curse ourselves.
Some dreams are divine, as well as
some waking thoughts. Donne sings of one
"Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray."
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely
less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct
in a dream, than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our
grief, which is our atonement, measures the degree by which this
is separated from an actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but
act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our
waking hours, and no doubt could discover some waking consent
thereto. If this meanness had not its foundation in us, why are
we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting
out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others
awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even
its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its
ever-wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly,
we should never have _dreamed_ of such a thing. Our truest life
is when we are in dreams awake.
"And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes,
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes."
-
THURSDAY.
"He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
. . . .
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
. . . .
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, - his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed."
^Emerson^.
-
THURSDAY.
- * -
When we awoke this morning, we heard the faint, deliberate, and
ominous sound of rain-drops on our cotton roof. The rain had
pattered all night, and now the whole country wept, the drops
falling in the river, and on the alders, and in the pastures, and
instead of any bow in the heavens, there was the trill of the
hair-bird all the morning. The cheery faith of this little bird
atoned for the silence of the whole woodland choir beside. When
we first stepped abroad, a flock of sheep, led by their rams,
came rushing down a ravine in our rear, with heedless haste and
unreserved frisking, as if unobserved by man, from some higher
pasture where they had spent the night, to taste the herbage by
the river-side; but when their leaders caught sight of our white
tent through the mist, struck with sudden astonishment, with
their fore-feet braced, they sustained the rushing torrent in
their rear, and the whole flock stood stock-still, endeavoring to
solve the mystery in their sheepish brains.
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