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79

AWAKING.

A Golden pen I mean to take,
A book of ivory white,
And in the mornings when I wake
The fair dream-thoughts to write,
Which out of heav'n to love are giv'n,
Like dews that fall at night.
For soon the delicate gifts decay
As stirs the miry, smoky day.
‘Sleep is like death,’ and after sleep
The world seems new begun,
Its quiet purpose clear and deep,
Its long-sought meaning won;
White thoughts stand luminous and firm
Like statues in the sun;
Refresh'd from supersensuous founts
The soul to blotless vision mounts.
‘Sleep is like death.’ Is death like sleep?
A waftage through still time?
And when its dreams of dawn shall peep
What strange or alter'd clime
Will they foreshow? No man may know;
Though some few souls may climb
So far as faintly to surmise
The master-secret of the skies.