Dreaming and philosophizing

 KING MEDIA DREAMS

“Gods and demi-gods! With one gesture all abysses we may disclose; and before this Mardi's eyes, evoke the shrouded time to come. Were this well? Like lost children groping in the woods, they falter through their tangled paths; and at a thousand angles, baffled, start upon each other. And even when they make an onward move, ’tis but an endless vestibule, that leads to naught.  -- Herman Melville, Mardi: And a Voyage Thither Volume 2, King Media Dreams.

Like lost children groping in the woods, they falter through their tangled paths; and at a thousand angles, baffled, start upon each other.

SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER

Did I dream? — Had I slumbered at my post ? — I did dream.

And why not tell my dream? — Life is little better; nay, it is little different. We wander at most in the dark—stumbling on temptations,—walking on the thorns of passions; or in an awful, but obscure light, refracted by the cloudy medium of philosophy. Sleep on, my friend! Though I would question you if I could, in this dark hour, if sympathy may pass the mysterious boundary of dream-land;—if that deathlike seeming calm were of careless oblivion,—or of the soul profoundly disturbed.  --March 1853 Scenes Beyond the Western Border ; and Scenes and Adventures in the Army.

In the book version, "the soul profoundly disturbed" has been revised to read, "some divine despair."