When I dream that you love me, you'll surely forgive; <br />Extend not your anger to sleep; <br />For in visions alone your affection can live,-- <br />I rise, and it leaves me to weep. <br /> <br />Then, Morpheus! envelope my faculties fast, <br />Shed o'er me your languor benign; <br />Should the dream of to-night but resemble the last, <br />What rapture celestial is mine! <br /> <br />They tell us that slumber, the sister of death, <br />Mortality's emblem is given; <br />To fate how I long to resign my frail breath, <br />If this be a foretaste of heaven! <br /> <br />Ah! frown not, sweet lady, unbend your soft brow, <br />Nor deem me to happy in this; <br />If I sin in my dream, I atone it for now, <br />Thus doom'd but to gaze upon bliss. <br /> <br />Though in visions, sweet lady, perhaps you may smile, <br />Oh, think not my penance deficient! <br />When dreams of your presence my slumbers beguile, <br />To awake will be torture sufficient.<br /><br />George Gordon Byron<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-m-s-g-when-i-dream-that-you-love-me/
