I.
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ur life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,A boundary between the things misnamedDeath and existence: Sleep hath its own world,And a wide realm of wild reality,And dreams in their developement have breath,And tears, and tortures, and the touch of Joy;They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,They take a weight from off our waking toils,They do divide our being;[35] they becomeA portion of ourselves as of our time, 10And look like heralds of Eternity;They pass like spirits of the past,--they speakLike Sibyls of the future; they have power--The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;They make us what we were not--what they will,And shake us with the vision that's gone by,[36]The dread of vanished shadows--Are they so?Is not the past all shadow?--What are they?Creations of the mind?--The mind can makeSubstance, and people planets of its own 20With beings brighter than have been, and giveA breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.[37]I would recall a vision which I dreamedPerchance in sleep--for in itself a thought,A slumbering thought, is capable of years,And curdles a long life into one hour.[38]
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