Whispers Lyrics

More strange than true. I never may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy:

Or, in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigured so together,

More witnesseth than fancy's images

And grows to something of great constancy,

But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigured so together,

More witnesseth than fancy's images

And grows to something of great constancy,

But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Dreamer dreamer,

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.

Lovers, to bed! 'Tis almost fairy time.

I fear we shall outsleep the coming morn

As much as we this night have overwatched.

Sweet friends, to bed.

A fortnight hold we this solemnity

In nightly revels and new jollity.