God turn every dream to good!
For it’s a marvel, by the rood,
To my mind, what causes dreaming
Either at dawn or at evening,
And why truth appears in some
And from some shall never come;
Why this one is a vision,
And that one a revelation,
Why this a nightmare, that a dream,
And not to every man the same;
Why this a phantom, why these oracles
I know not; but who of these miracles
Knows the cause better than me,
Let him explain, for certainly
I know it not, never thinking,
Nor busily my wits belabouring,
To know of their significance
The kinds, nor yet the distance
In time between them, nor the causes,
Or why this more than that a cause is;
As if folk’s complexions
Made them dream their reflections,
Or else thus, as some maintain,
Because of feebleness of brain,
Through abstinence, or from sickness,
Imprisonment, or great distress;
Or else by the disordering
Of their habitual mode of living,
Because some man’s too curious
In study, or melancholy, bilious,
Or so inwardly full of fear,
That no man may drag him clear;
Or else because the devotion
Of some, and contemplation,
Causes such dreams often;
Or that the cruel life, the harsh one,
To which those lovers are lead,
Who hope over-much or dread,
Simply through their emotions
Causes them to see visions;
Or if spirits have the might
To make folk dream at night,
Or if the soul, of its own kind,
Is so perfect, or such men find,
That it foresees what is to come
And gives warning, to all and some,
To each of them, of their adventures
Through visions or phantom figures,
Though our flesh lacks the might
To understand it all aright,
Since it is warned too darkly –
Yet what the cause is, ask not me.
Good luck in this to greater clerks
Who treat of these and other works,
For I of no firm opinion
Shall, for now, make mention,
Except that the holy rood
Turn our every dream to good!
For never a man since I was born,
Nor no man else who came before,
Dreamed, I believe steadfastly,
So wonderful a dream as me,
On the tenth day of December,
The which, as much as I remember,
I will you every detail tell.