Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SLEEP, by DANIEL MACINTYRE HENDERSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SLEEP, by                    
First Line: Thus would I question the unwearying one
Last Line: Which lifts between the earthy and immortal?
Subject(s): Sleep


Thus would I question the unwearying One
Who gave exhaustless vigor to the sea,
Ordained the ceaseless journey of the sun,
And bade the stars flame to eternity:
Why, when from clay He brought us with a breath
Did He give sleep -- since we shall soon know death?

Why did He limit so our might?
Even the youthful, lithe Olympian
Who runs from dawn till night
Must like the feeblest man,
Between the opiate dusk and trumpet morn,
To slumber's Lethe come, for strength reborn.

Is it that when the outward form is still --
Calm the tense limbs and quiet the curious senses --
The inmost spirit, the aspiring will
That shuns the day's vainglorious pretenses,
May then from prison walls of flesh go free
To venture the veiled steeps of destiny?

Is it that when the harried soul has peace --
Shut out the garish world's distracting gleam;
When strife and toil and tribulations cease,
That then the spirit, searching realms of dream,
Discerns what to the flesh is fugitive?
Do we in slumber more sublimely live?

Did the Lord God give mortals weariness,
And star-bejewelled darkness for a cover,
That from our clay the spiritual may press
To heights where grandeur waits and angels hover?
Do eyelids close to open that vague portal
Which lifts between the earthy and immortal?





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