Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NIGHT POEMS: 1, by CHARLES WILLIAMS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NIGHT POEMS: 1, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Of all the hours what hour is best
Last Line: Potentialities of sleep.
Subject(s): Sleep


OF all the hours what hour is best
But that which draws us both to rest?

And next, when early rumours shake
Our sleepiness and bid us wake:

For then the high delights that show
In our day's progress to and fro,—

And from some deep interior part
As if in sudden wrath do start

To be so long forgotten, and
Nimbly transmute a cheek or hand

Into a bright eternal thing,
A landmark on our wayfaring,—

Invisibly do us possess:
The wisdom that in wakefulness

Is by Imagination seen
Now in this soft betwixt-between

Flows through our limbs; eternity
Breathes at the lattices; and we,

Lightly together folded, prove
The immortal friendliness of love;

When, last or first, the instinctive kiss
Reminds us what long privacies

Of night and of repose were known,
Preludes to this communion

Of peace, within whose waves we are
Far-borne and drawn again from far,

Filled with the happy, silent, deep
Potentialities of sleep.





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