Even the ideal can vanish.

I assisted in the burial; I laid her in the earth; I heaped the monumental mockery over her form.
And never since hath she, or ought like her, revisited my dreams.

I see her only when I wake; thus to wake is indeed to dream! But," continued the visionary in a solemn voice, "I feel myself departing from this world, and with a fearful joy; for I think there may be a land beyond even the land of sleep where I shall see her again,--a land in which a vision itself may be restored." And in truth, concluded Trevylyan, the dreamer died shortly afterwards, suddenly, and in his sleep.

And never before, perhaps, had Fate so literally made of a living man (with his passions and his powers, his ambition and his love) the plaything and puppet of a dream! "Ah," said Vane, who had heard the latter part of Trevylyan's story, "could the German have bequeathed to us his secret, what a refuge should we possess from the ills of earth! The dungeon and disease, poverty, affliction, shame, would cease to be the tyrants of our lot; and to Sleep we should confine our history and transfer our emotions." "Gertrude," whispered the lover, "what his kingdom and his bride were to the Dreamer art thou to me!".