A Dream
One night lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around about me in full romp, and hilarity and laughter—on the lounge, half awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country. It was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: “When will they put off this and put on workmen’s garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter at the forge?” but they never put off the holiday attire.
And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I see. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: “Where do the poor worship, and where are the hard benches on which they sit?” And the answer was made me: