Dreams In Poetry Quotes & Sayings

The poems which touched her heart most, suffusing her with exalted emotion, so that she felt she could gather everything to her, were those which tell of the sorrow that wakes in the heart whose dreams have not been fulfilled, and of the beauty of that sorrow. The ship which in Autumn lies deserted on the shore, rudderless, mastless, used no more; the bird that cowers low in shelter, likewise in the Autumn, featherless and forlorn, driven before the storm;the harp that hangs trembling on the wall, silently mourning its owner's fall-all this was her poetry. — Halldor Laxness

I've never
stopped wanting to cross
the equator, or touch an elk's
horns, or sing Tosca or screw
James Dean in a field of wheat.
To hell with wisdom. They're all wrong:
I'll never be through with my life. — Rita Dove

I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I wouldn't mind
if life left me...

wingless

burnt to cinders
ripped by storms
scattered...like weeds

celestially wounded

without cherry blossoms
to perish with

but I would cry
with head held in my hands
if it left me...

unfulfilled. — Sanober Khan

Having set its mark on the generation before Cocteau's, symbolism expressed a form of inner dissidence confronting the narrow-minded materialism and utilitarian obsession of the industrial revolution, and hence a reaction to triumphant naturalism, in literature at least. Nourished by medieval, Renaissance, and Romantic art, symbolism, probably the last great backward-looking movement hatched in the West, had given rise to a desire to explore the secrets of the world and the confines of the soul. Beyond its androgynous Mercuries, its pale Narcissuses, and its Orpheuses borne by rosaries of angels, it gave rise to a whole misty alchemy wherein some found their way into esotericism and even into the religious, since the Universe was only the symbol of another world into which entrance was gained not only through poetry, spiritualism, dreams, and the Ideal, but also via the play of analogies and the study of ciphers. — Claude Arnaud

It's not that I literally think I'm a fearie. It's just that I feel so different from most people. And this idea of a race living underground in caverns, spending all their days dancing and playing the fiddle and eating flowers and reciting poetry and sharing their dreams, that to me sounds much more real than the way people live in this world, hating and fighting and wanting and hurting. — Francesca Lia Block

Happiness makes us older, less romantic, less in need of dreams. Discontent, not happiness, is the food of youth and poetry. — Nan Fairbrother

Dreams are chequered commentary made in sleep
Along the deeps of our desires,
moving like riddles through a magic glade
Lightly they touch the leap of hidden fires. — John Bradburn

Do you wonder where poetry come from? Where do we get the songs we sing and the tales we tell? Do you ever ask yourself how it is that some people can dream great, wise, beautiful dreams and pass those dreams on as poetry to the world, to be sung and retold as long as the moon will wax and wane? Have you ever wondered why some people make beautiful songs and poems and tales, and some of us do not?
It is a long story, and it does no credit to anyone: there is murder in it, and trickery, lies and foolishness, seduction and pursuit. Listen. — Neil Gaiman

No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: 'You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do.'
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs,
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell. — Czeslaw Milosz

Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are. — Julio Cortazar

Everything had become song. The curve of the road beneath the clouds here, and there the strokes of dark earth, the green and the gray, the torn pink of clay and gravel under fingertips. The consonance was above all that of the muffled shadow and grass to the depths of sky, where a flutter of cheerful feathers quivered.

In these dreams there are also black walnut trees, and then a forest that opens in a breeze. Nothing. Nothing more than the obstinate sound of wind. — Deborah Heissler

Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother ... And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness. — Anton Chekhov

But now, our daily monkeyshines are such, our preoccupations are so low, our language has be come so debased, the words so blunted and damaged, we've said such stupid and dull things, the the higher beings hear only babbling and grunting and TV commercials - the dog-food level of things. This says nothing to them. What pleasure can these higher beings take in this kind of materialism, devoid of higher thought or poetry? As a result, all that we can hear in sleep is matter creaking and hissing and washing, the rustling of plants, and air conditioning. So we are incomprehensible to the higher beings. They can't influence us and they themselves suffer a corresponding privation. — Saul Bellow

Dreams dress us carefully in the colors of power and faith. — Aberjhani

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers. — Charles Baudelaire

Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams. — Richard Brautigan

Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss. — Mary Shelley

Lao-tzu advised, "As soon as you have a thought, laugh at it," because reality is not what we think. We perceive the world through a window colored by beliefs, interpretations, and associations. We see things not as they are but as we are. The same brain that enables us to contemplate philosophy, solve math equations, and create poetry also generates a stream of static known as discursive thoughts, which seem to arise at random, bubbling up into our awareness. Such mental noise is a natural phenomenon, no more of a problem than the dreams that appear in the sleep state. Therefore, our schooling aims not to struggle with random thoughts but to transcend them in the present moment, where no thoughts exist, only awareness. Our mind's liberation awaits not in some imagined future but here and now. — Dan Millman

I Am!

I am - yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes -
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live - like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange - nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below - above the vaulted sky. — John Clare

The world of light and starry grace;
within your mind I live to trace.
Your thought's speed in thunder's glory,
lightening my being with dream's story.
I embrace the tree carrying your name
Your unspoken wish : the heart of fame. — Munia Khan

I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.
The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.
Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still. — Alexander Pushkin

The first night Stephen and I slept together, he whispered numbers into my ear: long, high numbers
distances between planets, seconds in a life. He spoke as if they were poetry, and they became poetry. Later, when he fell asleep, I leaned over him and watched, trying to picture a mathematician's dreams. I concluded that Stephen must dream in abstract, cool designs like Mondrian paintings. — Peter Cameron

Only in books the flat and final happens,
Only in dreams we meet and interlock ... — Philip Larkin

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
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 stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? — Edgar Allan Poe

What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music. — Gloria Steinem

I will forever walk alone in a world overflowing with those that will never understand my meaning of "Learning to See" I'm always teaching myself to see beauty in all aspects of reality, yearning to learn the beauty in others, from their vision of everyday life to their deepest secrets of their dreams. As the sun rises I must smile, smile for those with the beautiful mind and soul. I'm so passionate for the visions I see, and the dreams I wish the world could be. — Michael Jones

Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know. — Adrienne Rich

the bouquet

Between me and the world
you are a bay, a sail
the faithful ends of a rope
you are a fountain, a wind,
a shrill childhood cry.

Between me and the world
you are a picture frame, a window
a field covered in wildflowers
you are a breath, a bed,
a night that keeps the stars company.

Between me and the world,
you are a calendar, a compass
a ray of light that slips through the gloom
you are a biographical sketch, a book mark
a preface that comes at the end.

between me and the world
you are a gauze curtain, a mist
a lamp shining in my dreams
you are a bamboo flute, a song without words
a closed eyelid carved in stone.

Between me and the world
you are a chasm, a pool
an abyss plunging down
you are a balustrade, a wall
a shield's eternal pattern. — Bei Dao

My dreams are tangled in images of stars and clouds and firelight - we go camping at night - it's my lucid dream of being with you ... — John Geddes

The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires
And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,
Opens great gates to some forgotten year
Of elder splendours and divine desires.
Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,
Adventure-fraught, and not untinged with fear;
A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear
Toward walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.
It is the land where beauty's meaning flowers,
Where every unplaced memory has a source,
Where the great river Time begins its course
Down the vast void in starlit streams of hours.
Dreams bring us close - but ancient lore repeats
That human tread has never soiled these streets. — H.P. Lovecraft

...
You are here again,
so realistic,
just, the golden dawn
takes you away
in the morning...

Be here now,
not there,
where there is nothing
but stars
and emptiness...
... — Zorica Savron

LOCKING HORNS

Some are afraid to try new things,
To take a simple risk,
Limiting what they might accomplish,
Limiting what they might wish.

I'm not afraid to try new things,
To take a little risk,
For I believe that we've only moments,
To do the things we wish.

Some feel they have the time,
To do the things they want.
Some think their dreams not valid-
Others feel their paths unjust.

I believe that we should live our dreams,
To bring them to our lives,
For they are the intended paths,
The juices of our lives.

I believe that we should strive to do,
In order that we might-
Learn how to enjoy ourselves more fully,
And everyone in sight. — Giorge Leedy

The season was waning fast
Our nights were growing cold at last
I took her to bed with silk and song,
'Lay still, my love, I won't be long;
I must prepare my body for passion.'
'O, your body you give, but all else you ration.'
'It is because of these dreams of a sylvan scene:
A bleeding nymph to leave me serene ...
I have dreams of a trembling wench.'
'You have dreams,' she said, 'that cannot be quenched.'
'Our passion,' said I, 'should never be feared;
As our longing for love can never be cured.
Our want is our way and our way is our will,
We have the love, my love, that no one can kill.'
'If night is your love, then in dreams you'll fulfill ...
This love, our love, that no one can kill.'
Yet want is my way, and my way is my will,
Thus I killed my love with a sleeping pill. — Roman Payne

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for - business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business. — Henry David Thoreau

I don't believe we should carry backup
plans in life's suitcase
they're too easy to unpack
like living a life in yoga pants,
so comfortable our hips spread
into new timezones ... — Kelli Russell Agodon

Whiteness is the color of death, you know, not black. Wetness is life, the breeder and shaper of life. In the beginning the sun was black. So all light was absorbed before it had a chance to return. And our dreams, then, were empty. — Jim Carroll

What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,
That my songs do not show me at all?
For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,
I am an answer, they are only a call — Sara Teasdale

Every work of art reaches man in his inner powers. It reaches him more profoundly and insidiously than any rational proposition, either cogent demonstration or sophistry. For it strikes him with two terrible weapons, Intuition and Beauty, and at the single root in him of all his energies ... Art and Poetry awaken the dreams of man, and his longings, and reveal to him some of the abysses he has in himself. — Jacques Maritain

Sonnet I
If thee must say that I am not who I am,
That I am not real or true,
Then thou must say you are not as well,
For we either walk in fairytales and dance to our dreams,
Or we die trying to capture a miracle between the ordinary moments,
We rejoice in the gratitude for our needs met,
But we pray for the staircases and open doors to our desires,
We redefine our gratitude with another day,
Another dance of praise to Thee for undoing are mistakes of unneeded wants and needs we want, but not met. — Shannon L. Alder

I saw my face today
And it looked older,
Without the warmth of wisdom
Or the softness
Born of pain and waiting.
The dreams were gone from my eyes,
Hope lost in hollowness
On my cheeks,
A finger of death
Pulling at my jaws.
So I did my push-ups
And wondered if I'd ever find you,
To see my face
With friendlier eyes than mine. — James Kavanaugh

your smile.
is the ultimate
golden dream.
all the poems
in the world
are waking up from. — Sanober Khan

Such views the youthful Bard allure,
But, heedless of the following gloom,
He deems their colours shall endure
'Till peace go with him to the tomb.
- And let him nurse his fond deceit,
And what if he must die in sorrow!
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,
Though grief and pain may come tomorrow? — William Wordsworth

Everything is an echo of something I once read.

Dream, hope, and celebrate life!

Love always comes back in a song.

One thing we all have in common is a love for food and drink.

Memories never die, and dreams never end!

What is time? — John Siwicki

This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey) — Kellie Elmore

The Dream Keeper
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world. — Langston Hughes

I want to be intoxicated by the darkened ether of midnight, running through my fingers as sparkling stardust. I crave the taste of the ocean's salty tears, as her temperamental tides crash and break against the rocks. I yearn for the sweet scent of sun on my skin and the earthy musk of dirt giving way under my bare feet. I want to lay naked in golden fields, as i gaze up at an endless sky, dreaming my dreams, as Mother Nature's love washes over me like spiritual sunshine. — Jaeda DeWalt

You smile and draw me near and whisper, "Do as dreamers do."
I lean to you and whisper in your ear, "I cannot dream tonight my Dear. For it is you. — Shaun Hick

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other one will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know. — Billy Collins

Waldo nodded and waved goodbye pathetically, like a young father going off to war.
As soon as the door was closed and he was gone, Jeanne squelched her own apprehensions, opened the paper and read the poem Waldo had written for her:

One taste of Jeanne and out I flew
Wildly, madly, in no direction
But hers, and yet so straight and true
I fly towards her with no protection
It feels so strange to move this way
Though I should land, desire it seems
Moves in strange circles and so I stay
Disoriented beyond my wildest dreams. — Donald Jeffries

When Hughes writes, in the first two lines of his poem, "Let America be America again/ Let it be the dream it used to be," he acknowledges that America is primarily a dream, a hope, an aspiration, that may never be fully attainable, but that spurs us to be better, to be larger. He follows this with the repeated counterpoint, "America never was America to me," and through the rest of this remarkable poem he alternates between the oppressed and the wronged of America, and the great dreams that they have for their country, that can never be extinguished. — Harry Belafonte

I'd like to see North America become a dry, sunny, sandy region inhabited mainly by lizards, buzzards and a modest human population - about 25 million would be plenty - of pastoralists and prospectors (prospecting for truth), gathering once a year in the ruins of ancient, mysterious cities for great ceremonies of music, art, dance, poetry, joy, faith and renewal. That's my dream of the American future. Like most such dreams, it will probably come true. That is why I'm still an optimist. — Edward Abbey

Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known. — Edgar Allan Poe

I slay dragons at night while you sleep.
I see by the way your face contorts how they exist in your dreams.
Willing a magic sword, I plunge into your deepest nightmares and swing at the beasts with all my might, dodging flames exhaled by monsters that would eat me alive to go on torturing the fair one I love. I see your face relax, eyes still drowsily closed, when the mighty dragon is slain.
It may be that my fingers rub soft circles on your forehead as I imagine my brave fight as a knight reclaiming your dreams. You smile under the spell of my touch, and I am rewarded. And so, my love, as I await the dawn, I stand ready to slay dragons while you sleep. — Richelle E. Goodrich

As for you girls, you must risk everything for Freedom, and give everything for Passion, loving everything that your hearts and your bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a young woman than her freedom and her passion should be her desire to make her life into poetry, surrendering everything she has to create a life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in her imagination. — Roman Payne

How they had dreamed together, he and she ... how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

For if in careless summer days
In groves of Ashtaroth we whored,
Repentant now, when winds blow cold,
We kneel before our rightful lord;
The lord of all, the money-god,
Who rules us blood and hand and brain,
Who gives the roof that stops the wind,
And, giving, takes away again;
Who spies with jealous, watchful care,
Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways,
Who picks our words and cuts our clothes,
And maps the pattern of our days;
Who chills our anger, curbs our hope,
And buys our lives and pays with toys,
Who claims as tribute broken faith,
Accepted insults, muted joys;
Who binds with chains the poet's wit,
The navvy's strength, the soldier's pride,
And lays the sleek, estranging shield
Between the lover and his bride. — George Orwell

Girl in the wind
blowing wide open
the closed doors of my life -
which way are we going?

Standing against the lurid sky
on the stark brink of ocean
arms outstretched
as if your love and hunger
would embrace the world
and I in my inner room
playing my poetic premutations
can only look and ask the unanswerable.

Brave and cunning I speak to my typewriter
knowing it will not answer back
knowing it will not reply
what I ask and do not want to hear
as you with the vast sunset merge
a multitude of dreams away
uniquely alone and outside of me
in the purity and rarity of this moment
immeasurably beyond my love and my rage

and with the dying call of gulls
the echo resounds:

Girl in the wind
throwing aside
the tight shutters of my life -
which way are we going? — Christy Brown

I dream like a dew drop in the night
Then glitter in the morning sunlight
Then it evaporates to embrace the sky — Debasish Mridha

Romeo and Juliet"

The world is full of girls! Of all different kinds and shapes and sizes. They're all big question marks, incognito and unknown. They're a page in a book that's never been written or perhaps yet read. They're a title that's never been chosen, a language that's never been understood. Yet perhaps a treasure that hasn't been discovered.

Will any of this ever be revealed? That is even a bigger question mark. Yet, adventurous men, the brave and the naive ones, still pursue their endeavor toward their unknown dreams.

Will there ever be another Romeo and Juliet?
Or are we all Romeos and Juliets at the end? — Mauro Lannini

The poet dreams of the mountain
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall. — Mary Oliver

He's probably out there in the hallway right now, composing bad poetry in his head." Michi cleared her throat, her voice taking on a breathless lilt:
"Pale Fox's Daughter,
Her cherry lips haunt my dreams.
Something, something, breasts ... — Jay Kristoff

Mary's Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest...
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves' voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must seen him torn. — Luci Shaw

Oh, Man in the Moon"
"Oh, man in the moon, send an evening star to wink at my dreary eyes, and I shall make a wish for a peaceful world that spins with no more lies.
Oh, man in the moon, send the night's cool breeze to lull my leery heart, and I shall cast my fears to the wind with ease, and watch them all depart.
Oh, man in the moon, send the sandman's dust to rest my weary soul, and I shall slumber in happy dreams until the morning bells do toll. — Richelle E. Goodrich

She had her image ... and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paper - and this is the release that all writers, even the feeblest, seek for as men seek for love; and, having found it, they doze off happily into dreams and trouble their hearts no further. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too-going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico-and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them. — Natalie Goldberg

Where the mind is without pain Where knowledge is gain; With you, life is not vain Where hate is a burden
Faith in humanity is not entwine The traces of you is me
I am you and you are me Where dreams are not met
Where the sun set and yet;
we still strive towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of democracy
has not lost its way into a struggling nation frozen snow of dead end;
The traces of you is found with in young soul that rise up with faith and knowing that positive activism is the way to create a just society. — Henry Johnson Jr

We have a 'now you see Him, now you don't' God. We have Himself clothed in visions, in dreams, in metaphors, in parables, in the poetry of the Bible, and in all the ordinariness of the lives we live. — Luci Shaw

Phaedra's body pulled at the light, testing the softer side of midnight. Hyacinth usually slipped out of bed in the middle of the night, careful to fit her rustle inside Phaedra's dreams. — Naomi Jackson

Dreaming is the poetry of Life, and we must be forgiven if we indulge in it a little. — John Galsworthy

So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Thanatopsis — William Cullen Bryant

DiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams. — David Halberstam

A Paradise for you and me
Trust, true love to guide us free
Loneliness shall not fill the day
I will forever be with you
Our Love is beautiful like the sunshine lighting the way
Your gentle feel
Your caring hands
There is no doubt in your soul
No eerie place in your heart to express this feeling
Our compassion flows in the waves just to save and brighten my day My heart has no hoes Awaiting your pace
to touch this place
Our love, withstanding all odds Diminishing hate, in our thoughts There is no place I rather be til eternity... Than in your soul, life and in your dreams... I am here to stay with you forever. — Henry Johnson Jr

Ars Poetica

To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.

To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of mankind's days and of his years,
To transform the outrage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,

To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.

At times in the afternoons a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours. — Jorge Luis Borges

Quoting from Neil Kinnock, running against Thatcher in 1987:
Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Is it because all our predecessors were thick? Did they lack talent? Those people who could sing, and play, and recite, and write poetry, those people who could make wonderful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn't they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? Those women who could survive eleven childbearings? Were they weak? Anybody really think that they didn't get what we have because they didn't have the talent, or the strength, or the endurance, or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform on which they could stand. — Joe Biden

Marriage I think
For women
Is the best of opiates.
It kills the thoughts
That think about the thoughts,
It is the best of opiates.
So said Maria.
But too long in solitude she'd dwelt,
And too long her thoughts had felt
Their strength. So when the man drew near,
Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.
Poor Maria!
Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,
For now she's alone again and all in pain;
She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stay
To trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day. — Stevie Smith

The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times ... But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature. — Ferdinand Cohn

The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him ... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

She day-dreams just as I do. She is addicted to her solitude just as I am. She loves watching the rain-drops fall slowly on to the green leaves of an old guava tree just as I do. She loves drifting in time and time travel just as I do. She loves looking at the waves dashing against the rocks just as I do. — Avijeet Das

I WANT TO BE WITH SOMEONE WHO DREAMS OF DOING EVERYTHING IN LIFE
AND NOTHING ON RAINY SUNDAY AFTERNOONS. — Atticus Poetry

How many nights and sunrises came to caress our hearts. Then, as often happens, I see I'm just lonely in living the poetry of these moments, and I'm throwing away my magic. I can find refuge in my songs, they surround me like a mother, but then I realize that this hug is becoming a cage, I'm prisoner in my dreams, and I wonder: "may I be condemned to dream forever?" ... I wish I could watch again beauty of the moon, creating a big heart made of shells on the beach, as a castaway's signal ... hoping to be seen by someone who's flying up there ... and loudly saying .. "Hey .. I'm here ! please help me to escape — Alice James Books

It is not only my dreams, my belief is that all these dreams are yours as well. The only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them. And that is what poetry or painting or literature or filmmaking is all about ... and it is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are. We have to articulate ourselves, otherwise we would be cows in the field. — Werner Herzog

I have had my dream - like others
And it has come to nothing, so that
I remain now carelessly
With feet planted on the ground,
And look up at the sky
Feeling my clothes about me,
The weight of my body in my shoes,
The rim of my hat, air passing in and out
At my nose - and decide to dream no more. — William Carlos Williams

A hidden spark of the dream sleeps
In the forest and waits
In the celestial spheres of the brain. — Dejan Stojanovic

Think of your woods and orchards without birds!
Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams
As in an idiot's brain remembered words
Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Symptoms of Love ...
The quickening of my heart I can hear my breath as it passes through my body like wind through branches of a tree.
The sensation in my chest the dreams in my head my body reacts as if exposed to a sudden change in the elements.
My mind wanders not focused on one particular thing like an innocent long ago in his youth. Oh how I desire to be with you when our bodies will meet and become one. — M.I. Ghostwriter

Shows what you know, sunny-girl! I'm sure you've heard people talk about their Heart's Desire - well that's a load of rot. Hearts are idiots. They're big and squishy and full of daft dreams. They flounce off to write poetry and moon at folk who aren't worth the mooning. Bones are the ones that have to make the journey, fight the monster, kneel before whomever is big on kneeling these days. Bones do the work for the heart's grand plans. Bones know what you need. Hearts only know want. I much prefer to deal with children, boggans, and villains, who haven't got hearts to get in the way of the very important magic of Getting-Things-Done. — Catherynne M Valente

I have been happy, though in a dream.
I have been happy-and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife — Edgar Allan Poe

With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books. — Peter Abrahams

You hid in my ink and guided my hand. You stained the pages with your silence as God wrote the words, "Be still." Yet, my heart's blindness could only write in loud hues of red, "I love you. — Shannon L. Alder

With the wild nature as ally and teacher we see not through two eyes but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

What does travel ultimately produce if it is not, by a sort of reversal, 'an exploration of the deserted places of my memory,' the return to nearby exoticism by way of a detour through distant places, and the 'discovery' of relics and legends: 'fleeting visions of the French countryside,' 'fragments of music and poetry,' in short, something like an 'uprooting in one's origins (Heidegger)? What this walking exile produces is precisely the body of legends that is currently lacking in one's own vicinity; it is a fiction, which moreover has the double characteristic like dreams or pedestrian rhetoric, or being the effect of displacements and condensations. As a corollary, one can measure the importance of these signifying practices (to tell oneself legends) as practices that invent spaces. — Michel De Certeau

No. It was neither heroes nor sacrifice nor yet virtues that she loved most; rather the poetry which spoke to her of dreams that were either fulfilled to no purpose or never fulfilled at all; of happiness that came as a visitor or did not come, of how it came and went, or of how it never came. She saw and understood this man, not in an objective way, but in her own way: in the lambent colours of poetry, with woods in the background, and penetrating everything, the roar of the world's deepest and mightiest river. — Halldor Laxness

I think it shapes it in very deep ways that you don't entirely understand. Rainer Maria Rilke said there are two inexhaustible sources for poetry. One is dreams, and the other is childhood. I think childhood is an inexhaustible source of your becoming who you will be and certain deep feelings are set inside of you. — Edward Hirsch

But I can't control my dreams. I can't even remember them. For all I know I'm having the time of my life when I sleep, but I just can't remember. So I'm forced to live in a life I have no control over. A life where I'm either numb to everything or terrified of every thought that crosses my mind. If this is all just a dream, then it sure is a disappointing one.

But I still have time to try and control my dreams. I have time to try and make my dreams a reality in this waking life as well. The one bloody thing I have is time. I've got to remember that. I still have time. And despite everything, there is something reassuring about that. — F.K. Preston

there's always been heroes,
there's always been villains,
the stakes may have changed
but really there's no difference.

there's always been greed
and heartbreak and ambition.
jealousy, love,
trespass and contrition,

we're the same beings that began,
still living,
in all of our fury and foulness and friction.
Everyday odysseys.
Dreams vs decisions.
The stories are there if you listen. — Kate Tempest

Blossom

In April
the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there's fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood - we are more
than our hunger and yet
we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered
into the body of another. — Mary Oliver

We should write as we dream; we should even try and write, we should all do it for ourselves, it's very healthy, because it's the only place where we never lie. At night we don't lie. Now if we think that our whole lives are built on lying-they are strange buildings-we should try and write as our dreams teach us; shamelessly, fearlessly, and by facing what is inside very human being-sheer violence, disgust, terror, shit, invention, poetry. In our dreams we are criminals; we kill, and we kill with a lot of enjoyment. But we are also the happiest people on earth; we make love as we never make love in life. — Helene Cixous

It's not the dreams.
It's this love of you
that grows in me
malignant. — Jack Gilbert

the one
who will jolt awake
all the unwritten
the unsung
and the unlived
in me.

i am waiting
for him. — Sanober Khan