A dingy dream book

Once, indeed, now long ago, I found myself reading the first pages of a dingy and dumpy little book, a visionary book, murkily printed, and bound in what appeared to be shagreen, black shagreen. All that I can recall of its contents is a series of diagrams which appeared on pages 1 and 2. Against the first of these, a blank circle, was printed the word 'Reality'. Against the next, a blackened circle, was the word 'Unconsciousness'. The next circle showed a minute segment of white cut out of its black. This was labelled 'The Consciousness of an Ant'. The next, minus a rather larger segment, 'The Consciousness of Man'. From this I deduced--whether in the dream or on awakening I cannot say--that when, owing to the progress of the Superman, we arrive at Nirvana, all the black will have become white; that Reality and Consciousness will be coincident. 'I Am That I Am.' The infinite is All in All. This little revelation, as I say, was the subject matter of the first two pages of my dingy dream book. What, I wonder, were its last pages concerned with; and in what celestial library does it now repose?

Walter de la Mare, 'Dream and Imagination', Behold, This Dreamer! Of Reverie, Night, Sleep, Dream, Love-Dreams, Nightmare, Death, the Unconscious, the Imagination, Divination, the Artist, and Kindred Subjects, 1939