Lewis: Leaving the Land of Dreams

On Friday, June 28, 1963, C. S. Lewis wrote a letter to his long-time American correspondent, Mary Willis Shelburne. She had been suffering. He closed--

Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener's good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams.

But cock-crow is coming. It is nearer now than when I began this letter.

--The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press), 3:1434