For my own part,
I have never had a thought
which I could not set down in words
with even more distinctness
than that with which I conceived it.
There is, however,
a class of fancies
of exquisite delicacy
which are not thoughts
and to which as yet I have found it
absolutely impossible to adapt to language.
These fancies arise in the soul
alas, how rarely,
only at epochs of most intense tranquility
when the bodily and mental health
are in perfection,
and at those mere points of time
where the confines of the waking world
blend with the world of dreams.
And so I captured this fancy
where all that we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream.