As the mortal lay dreaming,
The world and time will sweep
Through his land of silent sleep,
In which Fair Folk are teeming,
The visions never seeming
To cease brimming deep.

The worlds contain elves
And you may too look
Upon many a book
On the great oaken shelves
Into which the mortal delves,
Carried off, as if by a brook,

To the faraway realm
Of both living and dead
To fill up the head
Of the mortal, under helm,
Below sturdy elm
By black river bed.

There is many a pain
In yet another world;
Enemy flags have unfurled
On a separate plane
In which there is strain
Between fingers soft and talons curled.

The mortal becomes antsy
In front of the dreamer-charmer,
And flees by noble and farmer
To obey oneiromancy
And fight with none-too-fancy,
Rust-coated, not-yet-bloody armor.

This is a dream of the mind—
One the mortal does not own;
It is not barren, yet still alone
From the earth left behind.
Only does the subconscious bind
The oneiric king to his pillow-clad throne.

As crows start to shroud
The truth of things with lies,
The gray upper skies
Shall then start to cloud,
And the deathly birds grow loud
As the dream-world dies.

The mortal is therefore jerked
Out into the initial library
With books on Faerie,
Although he is irked
After how diligently he worked
To go into the third world so scary.

He hears a distant voice,
Calling his real-life name:
“Child! Child! This isn’t a game!
You must make a choice!
Will you get up or will I get Joyce?”
Since getting that dog, nothing was the same.

The mortal child swam up and out
Of the dream and its treasures,
Hoping again to enjoy all its pleasures,
And did not begin to pout,
Or even to flout,
But to take cautious measures

To ensure he returned
To the world of the strange
That was not far out of his range
Yet had he really earned
To do what he yearned
To do: to come back to a place of change?

He rather thought so,
For had gone once,
And he was no dunce:
He had been taught so
He knew what was not so
And so now, for the dream, he hunts.