Seg. 
     A dream! 
     That seem’d as swearable reality
     As what I wake in now.

     CLO. 
     Ay—­wondrous how
     Imagination in a sleeping brain
     Out of the uncontingent senses draws
     Sensations strong as from the real touch;
     That we not only laugh aloud, and drench
     With tears our pillow; but in the agony
     Of some imaginary conflict, fight
     And struggle—­ev’n as you did; some, ’tis thought,
     Under the dreamt-of stroke of death have died.

     Seg. 
     And what so very strange too—­In that world
     Where place as well as people all was strange,
     Ev’n I almost as strange unto myself,
     You only, you, Clotaldo—­you, as much
     And palpably yourself as now you are,
     Came in this very garb you ever wore,
     By such a token of the past, you said,
     To assure me of that seeming present.

     CLO. 
     Ay?

     Seg. 
     Ay; and even told me of the very stars
     You tell me here of—­how in spite of them,
     I was enlarged to all that glory.

     CLO. 
     Ay, By the false spirits’ nice contrivance thus
     A little truth oft leavens all the false,
     The better to delude us.

     Seg. 
     For you know
     ’Tis nothing but a dream?

     CLO. 
     Nay, you yourself
     Know best how lately you awoke from that
     You know you went to sleep on?—­
     Why, have you never dreamt the like before?

     Seg. 
     Never, to such reality.

     CLO. 
     Such dreams
     Are oftentimes the sleeping exhalations
     Of that ambition that lies smouldering
     Under the ashes of the lowest fortune;
     By which, when reason slumbers, or has lost
     The reins of sensible comparison,
     We fly at something higher than we are—­
     Scarce ever dive to lower—­to be kings,
     Or conquerors, crown’d with laurel or with gold,
     Nay, mounting heaven itself on eagle wings. 
     Which, by the way, now that I think of it,
     May furnish us the key to this high flight
     That royal Eagle we were watching, and
     Talking of as you went to sleep last night.

     Seg. 
     Last night?  Last night?

     CLO. 
     Ay, do you not remember
     Envying his immunity of flight,
     As, rising from his throne of rock, he sail’d
     Above the mountains far into the West,
     That burn’d about him, while with poising wings
     He darkled in it as a burning brand
     Is seen to smoulder in the fire it feeds?

     Seg. 
     Last night—­last night—­Oh, what a day was that
     Between that last night and this sad To-day!

     CLO. 
     And yet, perhaps,
     Only some few dark moments, into which
     Imagination, once lit up within
     And unconditional of time and space,
     Can pour infinities.