THE PAINS OF SLEEP.

ERE on my bed my limbs I lay

It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!

* See Note.

Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know,
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night's dismay Saddened and stunned the coming day. Sleep the wide blessing, seemed to me Distemper's worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;

And having thus my tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,-
For aye entempesting anew

The unfathomable hell within

The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed.

From all that meets or eye or ear,

There falls a genial holy fear

Which, like the heavy dew of morn,

Refreshes while it bows the heart forlorn!

Great God! thy works how wondrous fair!
Yet sinful man didst thou declare

The whole Earth's voice and mind!
Lord, ev'n as Thou all-present art,
O may we still with heedful heart
Thy presence know and find!
Then, come, what will, of weal or woe,
Joy's bosom-spring shall steady flow;
For though 'tis Heaven THYSELF to see,

Where but thy Shadow falls, Grief cannot be !—

*See Note.

1814.

HUMAN LIFE,

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY.

IF dead, we cease to be; if total gloom

Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,

Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !
Surplus of nature's dread activity,

Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

She formed with restless hands unconsciously!
Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state, Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears Mean but themselves, each fittest to create,

And to repay the other! Why rejoices

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood, Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?

Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why! Thou can'st have none
Thy being's being is a contradiction.

;

A SWORDED man whose trade is blood, In grief, in anger, and in fear,

Thro' jungle, swamp, and torrent flood, I seek the wealth you hold so dear!

The dazzling charm of outward form,

The power of gold, the pride of birth, Have taken Woman's heart by storm— Usurp'd the place of inward worth.

Is not true love of higher price

Than outward Form, tho' fair to see, Wealth's glittering fairy-dome of ice, Or echo of proud ancestry?—

O! Asra, Asra! couldst thou see
Into the bottom of my heart,
There's such a mine of Love for thee,
As almost might supply desert!

(This separation is, alas!

Too great a punishment to bear; O! take my life, or let me pass That life, that happy life, with her!)

The perils, erst with steadfast

eye

Encounter'd, now I shrink to seeOh! I have heart enough to dieNot half enough to part from Thee!

* See Note.