SLEEP
LAST night I slid into the sea of sleep,Translucent, cool and deep.I left my dusty self upon the sandLike an old garment. Naked, free,I felt the waves close over me;The curious, eager water pressedAgainst the white curve of my breast.Then deep, deepThrough the green depths I sankInto the sea of sleep.This morning I rose out of the dark tide,I rose through darkness, and there was no light,No radiance to illumeThe dusk; only the pallid gloomOf sleep. First green, then blue,Then the thin water parted, and the sun shone through.There lay my body; strangely it was I.What did I bring back from the soundless deepFrom that grey, ancient sea of sleep:—The glint of sunken gold, the plaintive knellOf some drowned bell,Remembrance vague and dimOf ghostly argosies,The misty shores of far Hesperides,The wraith of mermaids beckoning white and slim,The faint sea-music of a curvéd shell.
LAST night I slid into the sea of sleep,Translucent, cool and deep.I left my dusty self upon the sandLike an old garment. Naked, free,I felt the waves close over me;The curious, eager water pressedAgainst the white curve of my breast.Then deep, deepThrough the green depths I sankInto the sea of sleep.This morning I rose out of the dark tide,I rose through darkness, and there was no light,No radiance to illumeThe dusk; only the pallid gloomOf sleep. First green, then blue,Then the thin water parted, and the sun shone through.There lay my body; strangely it was I.What did I bring back from the soundless deepFrom that grey, ancient sea of sleep:—The glint of sunken gold, the plaintive knellOf some drowned bell,Remembrance vague and dimOf ghostly argosies,The misty shores of far Hesperides,The wraith of mermaids beckoning white and slim,The faint sea-music of a curvéd shell.
LAST night I slid into the sea of sleep,Translucent, cool and deep.I left my dusty self upon the sandLike an old garment. Naked, free,I felt the waves close over me;The curious, eager water pressedAgainst the white curve of my breast.Then deep, deepThrough the green depths I sankInto the sea of sleep.
This morning I rose out of the dark tide,I rose through darkness, and there was no light,No radiance to illumeThe dusk; only the pallid gloomOf sleep. First green, then blue,Then the thin water parted, and the sun shone through.There lay my body; strangely it was I.
What did I bring back from the soundless deepFrom that grey, ancient sea of sleep:—
The glint of sunken gold, the plaintive knellOf some drowned bell,Remembrance vague and dimOf ghostly argosies,The misty shores of far Hesperides,The wraith of mermaids beckoning white and slim,The faint sea-music of a curvéd shell.