Are dreams but idle things, or is there a land where all our happy dreams
come true? Dreams are queer freaks of the intellect. We dream of the
dead whom we have not seen for so long, that we can scarcely recall the
picture of their face in our wakeful hours, but in our dreams we walk
with them and talk with them and see them just as they were while living.
The picture printed on our brain cells never fades away, and when the
brain is held under the proper light, the old picture comes to view. Do
these pictures fade away absolutely at death, or is there a land where
all these brain pictures are stored away, to be given to us when we are
called back?
I do not know; but it is a pleasant dream to half-believe that this is
true; for without these memory pictures being restored to us, how shall
we know our loved ones in the beyond when we meet them again? If the
grave swallows all our happy visions and dreams, the new life will find
us as babes, beginning to learn the very things we forgot at death. Then
all our present individuality would be lost, and the immortal part of us
would be a stranger to the mortal creature that died. God might as well
call new beings into existence, as an unknown and unknowable part of the
original creature. Without a memory we would not be able to recognize our
own soul, should we meet him in the spirit world.
Hence a recollection of our dreams and our visions must go with us into
the spirit world, or we must go as strangers without knowledge or a
consciousness of the past. No use to be of immortal material, if the
changes squeeze out memory pictures, for they are the tender chords that
bind the two conditions together. Heaven must be a land where our dreams
come true, or it would have no connection with this earth and this life.
I once wrote a few verses on this subject, that have never yet been
published. They fit in here very nicely:
Is there a land where our dreams come true,
The dreams that we dream when asleep;
A land of love that is always new,
Where the joyous never weep?
And the dreams that we dream when wide awake,
When the silence is on our soul,
When we look far out where the shadows break,
And the Dead sea billows roll.
Oh, is there a land where we shall awake,
From a dream that is full of sighs,
In a land where the boughs of the green trees shake
In the breezes that sweep the skies;
And behold the faces we loved so dear—
Who bade us the long adieu—
And see them smile without sigh or tear,
Oh, will ever our dreams come true?
I dreamed last night my mother came
And sang with the old-time charms,
And called me “darling” just the same
As when I slumbered in her arms.
The vision changed; I was a man,
A baby’s hand was on my face,
Its warm breath on my cheek, and then
I felt the baby’s warm embrace.
It was my baby, long since dead,
Her dreamy eyes were good to see;
Its baby tongue moved, and it said:
“Oh, isn’t it sweet to dream of me!
Oh, papa dear, your cheeks are wet,
Just like the flowers are wet with dew,
But soon you’ll wake, and you’ll forget
The land where all our dreams come true!”
Oh, is there a land where our dreams come true—
The dreams we are dreaming all day long?
And do they almost come into our view
When our souls are carried away with song?
Will all our visions and day-dreams return
The same as the seasons and song birds do?
Will we meet the dear ones for whom we yearn
In the land of immortals, where dreams come true?