The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

THE birds beset me in the mists of morning,
The chill thin twilight of the dawning day,
A note of urgence, bidding, chiding, warning,
Is in their lay.

“Arise!” So runs the burden of their flyting;
“And to the morrowing day our matins share;
For better far,” they say, Mohammed citing,
“Than sleep is prayer.

“Up, sluggard, up! The night is near its neaptide;
The morning shimmers through the shallowing mirk:
The hour is here that turns the sullen sleeptide
To wake and work.”

Begone, ye wanton, over-early wakers,
Nor tear my tired ears with your shrilling call!
If you have had your twelve hours' sleep, wiseacres,
Not so with all.

Nay, some like me there be who have no choosing,
Who cannot sleep when all are slumbering,
Who needs must watch and wake, whilst you are snoozing,
Head under wing.

Fain must they snatch their sleep, when all are waking,
Who, when all sleep, must watch, whose night is day,
Their scanty stint of rest and ease how taking
And when they may.

And as for prayer, forsooth, methinks the chatter,
With which you rend sleep's cobweb-subtle woof,
No more like prayer is than the pitter-patter
Of rain on roof.

353

Go preach to those who but by day burn eyelight:
Your rede for those whose nights for slumber be,
O pert Muezzins of the morning twilight,
Is, not for me.

For me, who watch in this lugubrious London,
All-nightly wandering in the ways of wake,
Seeking the undone done, the done things undone
Again to make;

For me, whose prayer is work, whose lauds are labour,
Who watch the white stars scale the long sky-steep,
More excellent (permitting noise and neighbour)
Than prayer is sleep.