University of Virginia Library

In storm, in darkness and in stress,
In languor and deep weariness,
What wonder if, o'er life's dark deep—
That tossing sea which dare not sleep—
From time to time, on each should come
An exile's sickness for his home?

The troubled sleep of man endures, it seems,
Long—and too long—laid waste with evil dreams
Which end not even with his latest breath,
And sad and lonely are the dreams of death.
May those who did with sleep of sense inbind
Vouchsafe, compassioning, to free the mind,
For heavy vapour doth the heart enring!
I, more than all, should pray for wakening—
These many years in mortal slumber kept.
What if, indeed, my time is overstept
And the great hour I should have known is past,
So that the only tenant in the vast
And silent place of sleep, in vain I beat
Wings weariful and weary hands and feet
Against the gates, with clamour and ado;
But there is no more hope of passing through!

If morn will come! It is so long to wait;
Long seem'd it never at the cottage gate—
That space of day the morn and night betwixt
When forth I went, and bore, to lighten toil,
A hallow for the crowded day's turmoil,
My bride within the gate, an image fix'd,
Till eve and love should come to hearten me.
But I went forth one morning when the free
Spring breath found ambush in her sunny hair,
Which opulence of light encompass'd, there
Standing so statue-tall, as saints might, crown'd,
And the child with her in the garden ground,
Where heavy scent of hyacinths abode.
Hard by the dusty tumult of the road,
That artless picture shone in equal grace
With any sacrament of angel's face;
And in my soul, as in the street, it stirr'd
The solemn rumours of that secret word
Which Nature must not utter lest she cease.
So as I pass'd abroad, with inward peace,
All suddenly methought that it was long
Betwixt the Matins-time and Evensong;
Then, midst a strange confusion in the mind
At many cries before me and behind,
I knew that I should go back never more—
That never gate should open as before,
Nor door swing back, nor scented dusk reveal
The eyes which welcome and the hands which heal—
Being by sad calamity or sin
Absorb'd for ever by the gulf within;
And, disinherited of earthly shape,
Doom'd self in self to find, nor e'er escape
Even by plunging deeper in the gloom—
Such is the unlighted secret of my tomb.

Long have I sought, yet no relief is found,
And my soul sickens in this aching round,
Amidst the purblind air and vapours dim;
For it seems idle now to call on Him
Who having put to sleep, as I have said,
Is my sole hope of waking from the dead
And all the ghostly semblances which fill
With their own dread these halls of voided will.
O but I pray that I may find some track
At least to my old life directing back,
And that my dreaming arms may there enfold
The wife who shared with me the sleep of old,
The little child whose innocence and mirth
Seem'd newly waken'd in the life of earth
Rather than aught which play'd in dreams of sleep.

There is an anthem full of meaning deep
Which evil thought from souls entranced could drive,
And save from phantoms of the night alive;
There is a promise which from old has said
How rest from labour on the blessed dead
In peace descends: Give me their balm once more,
And they, perchance, repeated o'er and o'er,
Shall yet become to me a gospel word,
With grace to die hereafter in the Lord.

Ah, let us rest—as much as men may do—
Those faithful homes within where hearts are true,
Because—without—the darkness and the cold
Hide laidly shapes and monstrous growths from view,
And hard it fares with those who shall behold!