 | The Poetical Works of John Payne |  |
HAUNTED LIFE.
HOW shall I 'scape the presence of this death?Sleeping, the Dream-God folds me in his wings;
And with the grey pale day comes Thought and brings
With him the sad enchantments of the breath
Of some dumb ghost-world that envelopeth
My narrow life with many-woven rings
Of imminent mystery. The viewless things
Are thick and tyrannous on me, a sheath
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The wraiths of things long dead and things undone,
Memories and forecasts, lives that yet shall be
Or might be compassed, with such strangling bands
They bind me, that this world beneath the sun
Fails from my grasp and life is death to me.
| The Poetical Works of John Payne | |