What if you slept?

And what if,

In your sleep

You dreamed?

And what if,

In your dream,

You went to heaven

And there plucked

A strange and

Beautiful flower?

And what if,

When you awoke,

You had the flower

In your hand?

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the road has gone

And I have to follow, if I can

Pursuing it with eager feet

until it meets some larger way

where many paths and errands meet

and wither then? I cannot say

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Darest thou now, O Soul,

Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,

Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?

No map, there, nor guide,

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,

Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not, O Soul;

Nor dost thou...all is a blank before us;

All waits, undream'd of, in that region...that inaccessible land.

Till, when the ties loosen,

All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,

Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.

Then we burst forth...we float,

In Time and Space, O Soul...prepared for them;

Equal, equipt at last...(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.

--Walt Whitman