Once more, you savage heavens, I ask of you—

I, looking up to those relentless eyes

That, now the greater lamp is gone below,

Begin to muster in the listening skies;

In all the shining circuits you have gone

About this theatre of human woe,

What greater sorrow have you gazed upon

Than down this narrow chink you witness still;

And which, did you yourselves not fore-devise,

You registered for others to fulfil!

Thus then what I for misadventure blamed,

Directly draws me where my wishes aim'd.

You and the world who have surnamed me "Sage"

Know that I owe that title, if my due,

To my long meditation on the book

Which ever lying open overhead—

The book of heaven, I mean—so few have read.

For, sure and certain prophets as the stars,

Although they err not, he who reads them may.

The curtain is undrawn,

And each must play his part out manfully,

Leaving the rest to heaven.

Why, now I think on't, I have read of such

A silver-hair'd magician with a wand,

Who in a moment, with a wave of it,

Turn'd rags to jewels, clowns to emperors,

By some benigner magic than the stars

Spirited poor good people out of hand

From all their woes; in some enchanted sleep

Carried them off on cloud or dragon-back

Over the mountains, over the wide Deep,

And set them down to wake in Fairyland.

Oh, those stars,

Those stars, that too far up from human blame

To clear themselves, or careless of the charge,

Still bear upon their shining shoulders all

The guilt men shift upon them!

Like sire, like son.

What some precocious warmth may spill,

May not an early frost as surely kill?

Beware! Beware!

Subdue the kindled Tiger in your eye!

Ay—wondrous how

Imagination in a sleeping brain

Out of the uncontingent senses draws

Sensations strong as from the real touch;

That we not only laugh aloud, and drench

With tears our pillow; but in the agony

Of some imaginary conflict, fight

And struggle—ev'n as you did; some, 'tis thought,

Under the dreamt-of stroke of death have died.

By the false spirits' nice contrivance thus

A little truth oft leavens all the false,

The better to delude us.

Imagination, once lit up within

And unconditional of time and space,

Can pour infinities.

Once the dreamer begins to dream he dreams,

His foot is on the very verge of waking.

Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul.

And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives,

Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake,

How if our waking life, like that of sleep,

Be all a dream in that eternal life

To which we wake not till we sleep in death?

One man—like this—but only so much longer

As life is longer than a summer's day,

Believed himself a king upon his throne,

And play'd at hazard with his fellows' lives,

Who cheaply dream'd away their lives to him.

The sailor dream'd of tossing on the flood:

The soldier of his laurels grown in blood:

The lover of the beauty that he knew

Must yet dissolve to dusty residue:

The merchant and the miser of his bags

Of finger'd gold; the beggar of his rags:

And all this stage of earth on which we seem

Such busy actors, and the parts we play'd,

Substantial as the shadow of a shade,

And Dreaming but a dream within a dream!

Was it not said, sir,

By some philosopher as yet unborn,

That any chimney-sweep who for twelve hours

Dreams himself king is happy as the king

Who dreams himself twelve hours a chimney-sweep?

What odds, when Fate is one's antagonist!

Whether wake or dreaming, this I know,

How dream-wise human glories come and go;

Whose momentary tenure not to break,

Walking as one who knows he soon may wake,

So fairly carry the full cup, so well

Disorder'd insolence and passion quell,

That there be nothing after to upbraid

Dreamer or doer in the part he play'd,

Whether To-morrow's dawn shall break the spell,

Or the Last Trumpet of the eternal Day,

When Dreaming with the Night shall pass away.

Captain

Nuño

Don Mendo

Juan

Crespo

Crespo

Don Lope

Crespo

Crespo

Crespo

Isabel

Crespo