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

THE imminent fulness of the days to come;
The nameless terror of the half-seen hills,
Whereo'er the storm broods and the thunder fills
The dreadful palaces of Space and Doom;
The long-drawn silences; the mists that loom
Across the sun-break and the radiant sills
Of morning; these it is that blunt the wills
Of wingless men and weigh them to the tomb
With unspent souls and lives that have outcast
No seed of hope upon the fields of day:
So that they wander in a lightless way,
Hand-lifting ever; “Will it come at last,
(If God live), that fair Present, purged away
From the black Future and the bitter Past?”

Ay, will it come? Alas, alas! the night
Flies low and swift along the greying West.
Which of our dreams shall fare the swiftliest?
Our hopes of Life to flower in the light
Of full mid-Present or the noiseless flight
Of that sad angel of the sorely-prest,
That brings the balsams and the wine of rest?
The “must” of sleep comes hard upon the “might”
Of action, filling up the hollow years
And the blank days left flowerless for the time
When the rent cloud shall certify our fears
Or crown our hopes of heaven, as it nears
With flame-lined flanks or crests up which there climb
Rain-mists that drop with all the hoarded tears.

Lo! if the sleep came, haply it were well.
How should we face it, if it came too near,
Too full and bright on us for eyes to bear,
That terrible glory of the Invisible,

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A splendour like a fire, ineffable,
More dreadful than the thunder, all too fair,
Too wholly perfect in the kindling air
Of upper heaven? Or if there befell
To us the other fortune, the sheer sight
Of all the glooms of Fate and Fear and Hell,
The full abysmal presence of the Night,
The night unsanctified by any bell
Of starlit heavens, blotting out Life's light
With rays of darkness unendurable?

Sure, it were well for us to lay life down
And sleep the undawning slumber of the dead;
Whilst over us the appointed levins sped
And the bolts broke upon the mountains brown;
Uncareful if the middle air were strown
With the blue flowers of day or sunset's red
Of coming thunder-blasts,—if night were spread,
A lurid vault of storm-clouds all wind-blown
Into the furnace of the wrath to come,
Or else a dome of many-coloured light.
Sleep should be whole for us and kindly gloom,
Unstirred by any pain or love-delight;
A kind child-slumber in its mother's womb;
An overfolding of the wings of Night.

Peace! for the shadow draws on us apace,
Hiding the unattained and painful years:
Peace! for the storm-wind fades from off our ears
And out of heaven the grey veil spreads a space
Of friendly shade before the upbraiding face
Of that To-be which never, never nears.
Night shall assoil us of our hopes and fears
And our tired sense drink slumber and the grace
Of stillness, solacing the restless souls.
Let us link hands and sleep, unsorrowing

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For all the undone hopes, the unwon goals.
Haply, some day, from out our wearying—
Healed with the years—a new fair life shall spring.
Till then, sleep sweet beneath the grassy knolls!