Dreams and Imagination

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep, Will make me sleep again.

Affection! thy intention stabs the center: Thou dost make possible things not so held, Communicat’st with dreams.

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land.

Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapor sometime like a bear or lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon ’t.

Show his eyes, and grieve his heart; Come like shadows, so depart.

The air-drawn dagger.

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

Or have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner?

And to be king Stands not within the prospect of belief.

The weird sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the sea and land, Thus do go about, about: Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again, to make up nine. Peace! The charm’s wound up.

All impediments in fancy’s course Are motives of more fancy.

O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe’er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy, That it alone is high fantastical.

I am giddy, expectation whirls me round. The imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense.

And in such indexes, although small pricks To their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought!

Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow’s bliss.

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.

O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you!… She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear.

But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigur’d so together, More witnesseth than fancy’s images, And grows to something of great constancy, But, howsoever, strange and admirable.