The Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell

"This was the measure of my soul's delight; It had no power of joy to fly by day, Nor part in the large lordship of the light; But in a secret moon-beholden way Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night, And all the love and life that sleepers may. "But such life's triumph as men waking may It might not have to feed its faint delight. "

So much for what Kennaston termed his "serious reading" in chance-opened pages of the past. There were other dreams quite different in nature, which seemed, rather, to fulfil the function of romantic art, in satisfying his human craving for a full-fed emotional existence -- dreams which Kennaston jestingly described as "belles lettres. " For now by turn -- as murderer, saint, herdsman, serf, fop, pickpurse, troubadour, monk, bravo, lordling, monarch, and in countless other estates -- Kennaston tasted those fruitless emotions which it is the privilege of art to arouse -- joys without any inevitable purchase-price, regrets that were not bitter, and miseries which left him not a penny the worse.