The Poetry of Dreams

'Perchance to dream' is an offer that most of us would accept in the blink of an eye. That mysterious 'other world' where the day's reality is processed by our subconscious, really is a mystery, even to the experts and self-help books who decipher our beguiling imaginings with all sorts of reasonings. Perhaps the better truth is that most of us don't remember much about our dreams, unlike its near neighbour the nightmare! Day-dreams too fall into a fantasy imagining where we try to re-route the natural course of events as we move from one emotion to another.Our unconscious dreams seem essential for our mental and emotional well-being and some believe they provide solutions, answers and prophesize important events. In the conscious world we use the word to describe our goals, desires and wishes which reveal much about who we are and our chosen path for life. Whatever their significance may or may not be, they are universal and a subject on which our poets have much to say.With such a rich seam to mine, our poets from Sarojini Naidu to Lewis Carroll, Edna St Vincent Millay to Shakespeare by way of Antonio Machado and Longfellow and a host of others provide a pillowful of poems that will set you dreaming.01 - The Poetry of Dreams - An Introduction02 - He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven by W B Yeats03 - A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe04 - The Dream by John Donne05 - The Dream by Amy Levy06 - Ay, Workman, Make Me A Dream by Stephen Crane07 - House of Dreams by Sara Teasdale08 - My Darling Dear, My Daisy Flower by John Skelton09 - Roses of a Dream by Damon Runyon10 - A Ballad of Dreamland by Algernon Charles Swinburne11 - Longing by Matthew Arnold12 - The Dream by Alexander Pushkin13 - A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe14 - The Dream by Aphra Behn15 - Love by Rupert Brooke16 - This Faulted Dream by Daniel Sheehan17 - Sonnet 87 - Farewell! Thou Art Too Dear For My Possessing by William Shakespeare18 - The Dream Called Life by Pedro Calderon de la Barca19 - Dream Fable by Rabia al Basri82 - Under the April Moon by Bliss William Carman21 - Song of a Dream by Sarojini Naidu22 - A Midday Dreamer by James Weldon Johnson23 - Dreams Old by D H Lawrence24 - A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky (Life Is But a Dream) by Lewis Carroll25 - Dream Town by Ella Wheeler Wilcox26 - A Little Boy's Dream by Katherine Mansfield27 - The Opal Dream Cave by Katherine Mansfeild28 - Dreams by John Dryden29 - Life Tells the Dreamer by Margaret Widdemer30 - Dreams by Anne Bronte31 - The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver by Edna St Vincent Millay32 - My Dead Dream by Sarojini Naidu33 - Dreams by Edgar Allen Poe34 - I Wake And Feel The Fell Of Dark Not Day by Gerard Manley Hopkins35 - I Go on Dreaming of Paths by Antonio Machado36 - Dreamland by Edgar Allen Poe37 - I Dream'd I Lay by Robert Burns38 - A Dream Lies Dead by Dorothy Parker39 - Harlem by Langston Hughes40 - Forgotten Dreams by Edward Silvera41 - Boaz Asleep by Victor Hugo42 - A Dream of Glory by Albery Allson Whitman43 - I Rose From Dreamless Hours by James Elroy Flecker44 - From Dewy Dreams, My Soul Arise by James Joyce45 - Dream Variation by Langston Hughes46 - Dreams by Robert Tannahill47 - Dreams by Robert Herrick48 - Dream Pediary by Thomas Lovell Beddoes49 - Dreamland by Christina Rossetti50 - A Nocturnal Reverie by Anne Kingsmill-Finch51 - Dreams and Duty by Tom Kettle52 - Last Night I Dreamed by Hafiz53 - Musselman's Dream by Anne Kingsmill-Finch54 - The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow55 - The Calm Poem by John Gould Fletcher56 - The Berg, A Dream by Herman Melville57 - The Haunting Dream by Victor Plarr58 - A Dream by William Allingham59 - Soldier's Dream by Wilfred Owen60 - The Slave's Dream by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow61 - The Dream by David Macbeth Moir55 - A Day Dream by Emily Bronte63 - Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats