She dreamed a thousand dreams of those sunlit regions and was consumed with longing for this other and richer self, forgetting — what is so easily fo… - Jens Peter Jacobsen

He was surprised at his own calm, but he did not have perfect faith in it. He felt as though something in the very depths of his being were bubbling, very softly, but persistently: welling up, seething, pressing on, but far, far away. He was in a mood as one who waits for something that must come from afar, a distant music that must draw near, little by little, singing, murmuring, frothing, rushing, roaring, and whirling down over him, catching him up he knew not how, carrying him he knew not whither, coming on as a flood, breaking as a surf, and then — But now he was calm. There was only the tremulous singing in the distance; otherwise all was peace and tranquility.

But, oh, how sweet it was to love for once with the love of real life; for now he knew that nothing of what he had imagined to be love was real love, neither the turgid longing of the lonely youth, nor the passionate yearning of the dreamer, nor yet the nervous foreboding of the child. These were currents in the ocean of love, single reflections of its full light, fragments of love as the meteors rushing through space are splinters of a world — for that was love; a world complete in itself, fully rounded, vast, and orderly. It was no medley of confused sensations and moods rushing one upon another! Love was like nature, ever changing, ever renewing; no feeling died and no emotion withered without giving life to the seed of something still more perfect which was embedded in it.

Niels Lyhne was bent upon being a poet, and there was much in the external circumstances of his life to lead his thoughts in that direction and stimulate his faculties for the task. So far, however, he had little but his dreams to write about, and nowhere is there more sameness and monotony than in the world of imagination; for in that dreamland, which seems so boundless and so infinitely varied, there are, in fact, only a few short beaten paths where everybody walks and from which no one ever strays. People may differ, but in their dreams they do not differ; there they always attain the three or four things that they desire — it may be with more or less speed and completeness, but they always attain them in the end. No one seriously dreams of himself as empty-handed. Therefore no one ever discovers himself in his dreams or becomes conscious through them of his individuality. Our dreams tell nothing of how we are satisfied when we win the treasure, how we relinquish it when lost, how we feast on it while it is ours, where we turn when it is taken from us.