Terza Rima on Transitoriness

III

We are such stuff indeed as dreams are made on,

And dreams open thus the eyes with force

As under cherry trees do little children,

From their crowns the pallid golden course

Of the full moon begins in vasty night,

...Not otherwise our dreams rise from their source,

Are there and live the way a child laughs light,

No lesser great in floating up and down

Than the full moon, from crowns of trees upright.

What is inmost quite easily they sound,

Like phantom hands within a shuttered room

Are they in us and live a life unfound.

And three are one: a man, a thing, a dream.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal