Yes, the weather is still miserable in New York.
Jan 30, 2008 Heart and spirit
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I have never thought, not for a second, that “life is a but a dream.” There’s nothing dreamy about it to me. I can tell the furshlugginer difference! But I like what Poe says here, and I wish the last two lines of this half-stanza had been the first two, so that he would conclude with the same sentiment J.K. Rowling does when, in the seventh Harry Potter book, Harry has a dialogue with the dead Professor Dumbledore. It is profoundly resolving — almost too good, Harry believes, to be true. And, after all, his mentor is dead.
Haryry asks him, then, is this moment real? Or is it all in his head? To which Dumbledore replies — of course it is all in your head, Harry. But that does not mean it isn’t real.
UPDATE: The sun is out! And it’s not just in my head. (In fact it’s still rather dusky in there.)
January 30th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Within the heart, or in the head,
How is fancy really bred?
Within the blood, or in the soul,
How in heavens do we know?
And what is real about us now
That this world will best allow?
Is not God, or is he real,
Tell me mortal, make appeal?
All these questions answer not
Things remembered, things forgot,
And yet is love our best reward?
Or things most ill we most abhor?
One day to man is passing fine,
The next eternal in his mind,
But is the mind the truth we see?
Or mindful truth quite absentee?
I cannot answer what I know
It matters not, not apropos,
And yet all is mine, is mine alone
To damn, or maybe, to atone,
So is it real, or is it nay?
If language could then I would say,
But some things we can only hint,
You cannot save what must be spent,
And so to every man himself
An Eden’s eve, or prison cell,
I cannot help but wonder why
Together most, alone awry,
A man can doubt most everything
Be it sure, or in a dream,
Except his doubt seems all too true
Even when he’s born anew.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Jack, I am not paying for submissions, you realize.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
You know, a lot of people say that about poetry these days.
January 30th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
“Fleeting as were the dreams of old,
Remembered like a tale that’s told,
We pass away.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
June 12th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
I have no recollection of writing this. Where did I get that poem?