Once was a god whose lovely face,
Wan as the poppy and arched in wings,
So haunted a votary with his grace
And the still wonder that worship brings,
That, having sipped of Helicon’s springs,
He cast his beauty in bronze. And now
Eternal slumber bedims his brow —
Hypnos: and Dream was his dear son.
Not ours these follies. We haunt instead
Tropical jungles drear and dun,
And see in some fetish of fear and dread
Our symbol of dream — that brooding head!
And deem the wellspring of genius hid
In a dark morass that is dubbed the Id.
Walter de la Mare, from ‘Dreams’, The Fleeting and Other Poems, 1933
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