To dream of angels presages joy and prosperity with
the fulfilment of our dearest hope.
PERCHANCE she knows it by her dreams,
Her eye hath caught the golden gleams
(Angelic presence testifying),
That round her everywhere are flying;
Ostents from which she may presume
That much of Heaven is in the room.
Skirting her own bright hair they run,
And to the sunny add more sun.
But may ye not unseen, around us hover, With gentle promptings and sweet influence yet; Though the fresh glory of those days be over, When midst the palm-trees, man your footsteps met? Are ye not near when faith and hope rise high, When love by strength o'ermasters agony?
It is a beautiful, a blest belief
That the beloved dead, grown angels, watch
The dear ones left behind.
Light as the angel shapes that bless
An infant's dream, yet not the less
Rich in all woman's loveliness.
To dream of antique, rare, and costly objects, presages some happy event—the arrival of a dear friend, or a fortunate and unexpected discovery.
NICHOLAUS VON KLINGELBERG.
CASES of rare medallions, coins antique
Found in the dust of cities, Roman, Greek;
And urns of alabaster, soft and bright,
With fauns and dancing shepherds on their sides;
And costly marble vases dug from night
In Pompeii, beneath its lava-tides:
Clusters of arms, the spoil of ancient wars,
Old scymitars of true Damascus brand,
Short swords with basket-hilts to guard the hand,
And iron casques with rusty visor-bars:
Lances and spears, and battle-axes keen,
With crescent edges, shields with studded thorns,
Yew-bows, and shafts, and curved bugle-horns,
With tassled baldrics of the Lincoln green:
And on the walls with lifted curtains, see!
The portraits of my noble ancestry;
Thin-featured, stately dames with powdered locks,
And courtly shepherdesses tending flocks,
Stiff lords in wigs, and ruffles white as snow,
Haught peers and princes centuries ago,
And dark Sir Hugh, the bravest of the line,
With all the knightly scars he won in Palestine.
If in his study he hath such a care
To hang old strange things, let his wife beware.
-the pictures and the blazoned books, The glittering armour and the oaken screen, Grotesque with wry-faced purgatorial shapes.
To dream of many kinds of animals herding or thronging together, denotes some strange and direful adventure.
WHILE he thus spake, there came into my mind
This fearefull dreame, whereout I waked was:
I saw a river stopt with stormes of winde,
Wherethrough a Swan, a Bull, a Bore did passe,
Tranching the fish and fire with teeth of brasse,
Methought this streame did drowne the cruell Bore,
In little space it grew so deepe and brode:
But he had killed the Bull and Swan before.
Besides all this I saw an uglie Tode
Crale towards me, on which methought I trode:
But what became of her, or what of me,
My sudden waking would not let me see.
THE MIRROUR FOR MAGISTRATES.
I had a dream last night of Noah's ark,
Methought I saw the beasts go two by two
Up a long plank and into their abode.
First came the nobler brutes, and then in turn,
By mild gradation walked the viler sort,
And, after all, the reptiles. Then I saw
Those insects which more terrify the brave
Than lions, snakes or tigers-for there flew,
Or crept according to his kind, the bug,
The cockroach and mosquito. Last and worst,
Meaner than all-vilest among the vile,
Came two small critic-lings, whose ignorance
But half out-topped their venom.
When I saw
This paltry vermin closing up the train,
I called to Noah and in sorrow cried,
"Oh great Ark-Patriarch, if it needs must be
Keep the mosquitoes and the chinches dire,
The murd'rous flea and eke the cock-a-roach,
Yea-spare the bugs-(forgive me, reader mine!)
But Oh! block out that vilest pair, who crawl
Disgracing all before them ?" "So I would,"
The sire replied-" and kill them both to boot;
But 'tis ordained the filthy things must live,
E'en for their mutual torture"-here I woke.
MEISTER KARL.
To dream of hammering on an anvil presages success and honour in spite of opposition and enmity.
I DREAMT I stood by a roaring fire,
Near the blacksmith grimy and grim;
And watched the blaze rise higher and higher,
As it lit up each brawny limb.
Bang, bang, his hammer rang,
And drove out many a spark;
They seemed the devil's own fire-flies,
As they darted through the dark.
The smith struck high-the smith struck low,
As over his work he bent;
And if every blow had been on a foe,
A battle had soon been spent.
Cling, cling, the steel doth ring,
In flaming crimson dressed;
Of all the callings that I know,
I love the blacksmith's best.
King Siegfried of old was a blacksmith bold,
And well on the iron could pound;
With his very first blow, he drove, I'm told,
The anvil into the ground:
Round, round, into the ground,
And beat his hammer flat;
No man alive but a blacksmith stout,
Could strike you a blow like that.
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