Dreams and Imagination

I carry the sun in a golden cup, The moon in a silver bag. 8

Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come, Dancing to a frenzied drum, Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

In dreams begins responsibility. 4

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light.

The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy; Of old the world on dreaming fed; Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager: Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile, A million golden birds, O future Vigor? 9

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, And many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod.

Ah, pray make no mistake, We are not shy; We’re very wide awake, The moon and I!

For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich— Which is something between a large bathing machine and a very small second-class carriage.

He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A penny postage stamp. “You’d best be getting home,” he said, “The nights are very damp.”

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway share; They charmed it with smiles and soap.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings.”

Child of the pure, unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder! Though time be fleet and I and thou Are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy tale.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork Without a Revery— And so encountering a Fly This January Day Jamaicas of Remembrance stir That send me reeling in.

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, And I become the other dreamers.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

But me they’ll lash in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? Just ease these darbies [manacles] at the wrist, And roll me over fair! I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin’s lamp.