Come to me in my dreams, and then, One saith, I shall be well again, For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.
Nay, come not THOU in dreams, my sweet, With shadowy robes, and silent feet, And with the voice, and with the eyes That greet me in a soft surprise.
Last night, last night, in dreams we met, And how, to-day, shall I forget, Or how, remembering, restrain Mine incommunicable pain?
Nay, where thy land and people are, Dwell thou remote, apart, afar, Nor mingle with the shapes that sweep The melancholy ways of Sleep.
But if, perchance, the shadows break, If dreams depart, and men awake, If face to face at length we see, Be thine the voice to welcome me.
HESPEROTHEN
By the example of certain Grecian mariners, who, being safely returned from the war about Troy, leave yet again their old lands and gods, seeking they know not what, and choosing neither to abide in the fair Phaeacian island, nor to dwell and die with the Sirens, at length end miserably in a desert country by the sea, is set forth the VANITY OF MELANCHOLY. And by the land of Phaeacia is to be understood the place of Art and of fair Pleasures; and by Circe's Isle, the place of bodily delights, whereof men, falling aweary, attain to Eld, and to the darkness of that age. Which thing Master Francoys Rabelais feigned, under the similitude of the Isle of the Macraeones.
