The Dream - Ketil Bjørnstad

Image of her whom I love, more than she,

Whose fair impression in my faithful heart,

Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,

As kings do coins, to which their stamps impart

The value: go, and take my heart from hence,

Which now is grown too great and good for me:

Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense

Strong objects dull;

the more, the less we see.

When you are gone, and reason gone with you,

Then fantasy is queen and soul, and all;

She can present joys meaner than you do;

Convenient, and more proportional.

So, if I dream I have you, I have you,

For, all our joys are but fantastical.

And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true;

And sleep which locks ups sense, doth lock out all.

After a such friction I shall wake,

And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;

And shall to love more thankful sonnets make,

Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.

Bur dearest heart, and dearer image stay;

Alas, true joys at best are dream enough;

Though you stay here you pass too fast away:

For even at first life’s taper is a snuff.

Filled with here love, may I be rather grown

Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.