Sleep puts sin by, as the grave life's despair; <br />And though bad dreams in sleep may come, the soul <br />Is tainted not with error, being then <br />Beyond the body's shade, as in a sphere <br />Like that to which death may remove us when <br />The flesh itself is past pollution too. <br />It is the waking thought that we must answer, <br />When the whole man is up, and the will has play; <br />Not any drowsy essence that contrives <br />As with an ultramundane faculty <br />To act within us when the reason's gone, <br />And that, our temporal government, laid aside, <br />Our kingdom is left open, as it were, <br />Without a deputy, to all the worlds, <br />Whose mystic coursers may by stealth enact <br />Their wills upon us.<br /><br />Robert Crawford<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sleep-and-death-3/
