But for dreams, that lay Mosaic worlds tessellated with flowers and
jewels before the blind sleeper, and surround the recumbent living with
the figures of the dead in the upright attitude of life, the time would
be too long before we are allowed to rejoin our brothers, parents,
friends: every year we should become more and more painfully sensible
of the desolation made around us by death, if sleep--the ante-chamber
of the grave--were not hung by dreams with the busts of those who live
in the other world.