LANDSCAPES SEEN IN DREAMS 



is instant, and in the foreign place begins 

 a vita nuova relief and an intensity of 

 living never known before the new and 

 familiar harbor came down to meet us at 

 the shore. So sometimes it is in dreams. 

 Recurrent and vivid, a scene of sheerest 

 unreality will take on an earthly air, or 

 landscapes flamboyantly exotic will hold 

 the peace denied by every country it has 

 been our daily fortune to know. 



Dream landscapes come back again and 

 again, as if they waited there forever, sub- 

 stantial, and we were the transient comers. 

 Some, in ether dreams, shrink always from 

 the same green waves, the same black, 

 open mine, and two have now and then 

 been found who saw on sleep journeys 

 places that words repictured curiously 

 alike. The fantasies may be patchwork 

 of poems, plays, and paintings long for- 

 gotten, but when they rise in their com- 

 pelling fusion they owe no debt to the 

 lumber attic of the subconscious. The 

 world they fashion is their own, and they 

 do offer by their ethereal pathway a com- 

 pensation for the insufficiencies of life. 



There is a long, uncurving sea strand 

 whose gray immensity of sands lies smooth 



173] 



