Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FRAGMENT, by HERBERT TRENCH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FRAGMENT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I sleep. The panoply of sense
Last Line: The full theme of the song?
Subject(s): Hearts; Fire


I SLEEP. The panoply of sense,
The buffetings, the din,
The breasts of love, the battle dense,
The roaring drive I know not whence,
The riot curbed within,
Cease, and in dreamless innocence
The Self forgets its sin;
Forgets, unloosing like a robe,
The body and its grief,
Till at the Dawn over the globe
(That soft and silver thief!)
It wakes; nor ever eye can probe
Where it has found relief.

I die. The treasure-ships I sought,
The glories and the glee,
The lives wherewith my own was wrought
(As in some tapestry gem-fraught)
Nearly and tenderly,
And the tune mine ear had almost caught,
All sink away from me.
Then dreamless aeons interpose.
The gap, perchance, is long.
Will the Self wake to strains it knows?
Will the vast star-lit throng
Take up, renewed by deep repose,
The full theme of the song?





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