Although our bodies fetter'd lie,
In dull insensibility,
Say, what magic spell can bind
Th' adventurous active mind,
Which, borne by sportive Fancy, soars,
And, with the swiftness of an eagle's flight,
Darts through boundless regions bright,
And other worlds explores.
Reason cannot now command,
For she has snatch'd the sceptre from his hand.
Nor can exhausted Time thwart her career;
Ages are but moments here,
And moments oft as ages in her sight.
Jocund Mirth, with laughing eye;
Lively Health of blooming hue,
Her garments bath'd in morning dew
Grave Temperance, and patient Industry;
Thee with grateful pleasure greet,
And own thy secret influence sweet.
But softly as the dewy show'r
To exhausted Nature gives
Those genial drops by which she lives,
And sheds refreshment o'er each drooping flow'r;
So thy lenient balmy pow'r,
E'en to the wretched often kind, O Sleep!
Can calm the breast, heaving with struggling sighs;
And gently seal those flowing eyes,
Whose fondest task has been to weep.
At dead of night, imperial Reason sleeps,
And Fancy with her train her revels keeps.
Then airy phantoms a mix'd scene display,
Of what we heard, or saw, or wish'd by day;
For Memory those images retains
Which passion form'd, and still the strongest reigns. Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run,
And generals fight again their battles won.
Spectres and furies haunt the murderer's dreams,
Grants and disgraces are the courtier's themes
The miser spies a thief, or a new hoard;
The cit's a knight; the sycophant a lord.
Thus Fancy's in the wild distraction lost,
With what we most abhor, or covet most.
Honours and state before this phantom fall;
For Sleep, like death its image, equals all.
Chaucer has a fine description,
Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes;
When monarch Reason sleeps, their mimic wakes;
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A court of coblers, and a mob of kings:
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad.
And many curious things in sleep we see,
That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.
Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind,
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.
The nurse's legends are for truths receiv'd,
And the man dreams but what the boy believ'd.
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play;
The night restores our actions done by day,
As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.
Thus Milton,-
In the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds, of all external things,
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imagination's aëry shapes,
Which Reason joining, or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm, or what deny, or call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell. When Nature rests,
Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes,
To imitate her; but misjoining shapes,
Wild works produces oft, but most in dreams,
Ill matching words or deeds, long past or late.
Fancy is not more sportive in dreams, than are the poets in their descriptions of her nocturnal vagaries. Our great dramatic bard, Shakspeare, excels all others on this subject,
Oh! then I see Queen Mab hath been with you-
She is the Fancy's midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the fore finger of an alderman;
Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her waggoner, a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm,
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid.
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-maker:
And, in this state, she gallops night by night,
Thro' lovers' brains, and then they dream of love:
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight;
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson as he lies asleep;
Then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then, anon,
Drums in his ear, at which he starts! and wakes,
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again.
A person may form a judgment of his health and temperament by the pleasantness or unpleasantness of his dreams, and likewise learn some useful hints relative to the strength of the passions.
Mr. Owen Feltham, in his Resolves, makes the following observations on dreams :—
"Dreams are notable means of discovering our own inclinations. The wise man learns to know himself as well by the night's black mantle, as the searching beams of day. In sleep we have the naked and natural thoughts of our souls; outward objects interpose not, either to throw in occasional cogitations, or draw out the included fancy. The mind is then shut up in the borough of the body; none of the cinqueports of the Isle of Man are then open to inlet any strange disturber. Surely, how we fall to vice, or rise to virtue, we may, by observation, find in our dreams. It was the wise Zeno that said he could collect a man by his dreams. For then the soul, sated with a deep repose, betrayed her true affections, which, in the busy day, she would either not shew, or not note. It was a custom among the Indians, when their kings went to their sleep, to pray with piping acclamations
that they might have happy dreams; and withal consult well for their subjects' benefit: as if the night had been a time wherein they might grow good and wise. And certainly, the wise man is the wiser for his sleeping, if he can order well in the day what the eyeless night presents him. Every dream is not to be noticed, nor yet are all to be cast away with contempt. I would neither be a stoic, superstitious in all; nor yet an epicure, considerate of none. If the physician may by them judge of the disease of the body, I see not but that the divine may do so concerning the soul. I doubt not but the genius of the soul is waking and motive, even in the fastest closures of the imprisoning eyelids. But to presage from these thoughts of sleep, is a wisdom that I would not reach to. The best use we can make of dreams, is observation; and, by that, our own correction or encouragement. For it is not doubtful, but that the mind is working in the dullest depth of sleep."
I am confirmed by Claudian:
Day-thoughts, transwinged from th' industrious breast,
All seem re-acted in the night's dumb rest.
When the tir'd huntsman his repose begins,
Then flies his mind to woods, and wild beasts' dens;
Judges dream cases: champions seem to run,
With their night coursers, the vain bounds to shun.
Love hugs his rapes; the merchant traffic minds;
The miser thinks he some lost treasure finds.
And to the thirsty sick some potion cold,
Stiff flattening sleep inanely seems to hold.
Yea, and in th' age of silent rest, ev'n I,
Troubled with art's deep musings, nightly lie.
Dreams do sometimes call us to a recognition of our inclinations, which print the deeper in such undisturbed times. I could wish men to give them their consideration, but not to allow them their trust; though sometimes it is easy to cull out a profitable moral. Antiquity had them in much more reverence, and did oft account them prophecies, as is easily found in the Sacred Volume: and among the heathen, nothing was more frequent. Almost every prince among the heathens had his fate shewn in interpreted dreams. Galen tells of one, that dreamed his thigh was turned to stone, when, soon after, it was struck with a dead palsy. The aptness of the humours to the like effects, might suggest something to the mind,
then apt to receive it. So that I doubt not but either to preserve health, or amend the life, dreams may, to a wise observer, be of special benefit. I would neither depend upon any, to incur a prejudice, nor yet cast them all away, in a prodigal neglect and scorn.
In returning to the subject of Sleep, I shall present the reader with a few more poetical quotations:
O sweet refreshing Sleep! thou balmy cure
Of sickness and of pain!
How has thy gentle power at length reliev'd me!
O soft oblivion of surrounding ills,
How grateful to th' afflicted are thy charms!
EURIP. BY HUGHES.
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast!
SHAKSPEARÉ.
Thou silent power, whose welcome sway
Charms every anxious thought away,
In whose divine oblivion drown'd,
Sore pain and weary toil grow mild,
Love is with kinder looks beguil'd,
And grief forgets her fondly cherish'd wound;
O whither hast thou flown, indulgent god?
God of kind shadows, and of healing dews,
Whom dost thou touch with thy Lethæan rod?
Around whose temples now thy opiate airs diffuse?
AKENSIDE
Haste, haste, sweet stranger! from the peasant's cot,
The ship-boy's hammock, or the soldier's straw,
Whence sorrow never chas'd thee; with thee bring
Not hideous visions, as of late; but draughts
Delicious of well-tasted cordial rest;
Man's rich restorative; his balmy bath,
That supples, lubricates, and keeps in play
The various movements of this nice machine,
Which asks such frequent periods of repair.
Sweet pleasing Sleep, of all the powers the best!
O peace of mind, repairer of decay,
Whose balms renew the limbs to labours of the day,
Care shuns thy soft approach, and sullen flies away!
DRYDEN.
Soft Sleep, profoundly pleasing pow'r,
Sweet patron of the peaceful hour,
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