The Literature and Curiosities of Dreams

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DREAMS, ANCIENT AND MODERN. DREAM OF ACHILLES. HOMER. ' He spoke; they hear him and the word obey; The rage of hunger and of thirst allay, Then ease in sleep the labours of the day. ' But great Pelides, stretched along the shore, Where, dashed on rocks, the broken billows roar, Lies inly groaning; while on either hand The martial myrmidons confusedly stand: Along the gross his languid members fall, Tired with his chase around the Trojan wall; Hushed by the murmurs of the rolling deep, At length he sinks in the soft arms of sleep. . When lo I the shade before his closing eyes Of sad Patroclus rose, or seemed to rise; In the same robe he living wore he came, In stature, voice, and pleasing look the same. REMONSTRANCE OF PATROCLUS. The form familiar hovered o'er his head, And sleeps Achilles ?thus the phantom said? Sleeps my Achilles, his 1'atroclus dead P Laving I seemed his dearest, tenderest care, But now forgot I wander in the air: Let my pale cone the rights of burial know, And give me entrance in the realms below: Till then the spirit finds no resting place, But here and there the unbodied spectres chase The vagrant dead around the dark abode, Forbid to cross th' irremeable flood. Now give thy hand, for to the farther shore, When once we pass, the soul returns no more. When once the last funereal flames ascend No more shall meet Achilles and his friend; No more our thoughts to those we loved make known, Or quit the dearest to converse alone. Me fate has severed from the sons of earth, The fate fore-doomed that waited from my birth. Thee, too, it waits; before the Trojan wall Even great and godlike thon art doomed to fall, Hear then, and as in fate and love we join, Ah, suffer that my ...