HALF dead with fever here in bed I sprawl, In candlelight watching the odd flies crawl Across the ceiling's bleak white desolation; -- Can they not yet have heard of gravitation? -- Hung upside down above the precipice To doze the night out; ignorance is bliss! Your blood be on your heads, ridiculous flies. Dizzying with these, I glare and tantalize At the motley hides of books which moulder here, "On Choosing A Career," "Ten Thousand a Year"; "Ellis on Sheep," "Lamb's Tales," a doleful Gay, A has-been-Young, dead "Lives," vermilion Gray, And a whole corps of 1790 twelves. My eye goes blurred along these gruesome shelves, My brain whirs Poems of ... Poems of ... like a clock; And I stare for my life at the square black ebony block Of darkness in the open window-frame. Then my thoughts flash in one white searching flame On my little lost daughter; I gasp and grasp to see Her shy smile pondering out who I might be, Her rathe-ripe rounded cheeks, near-violet eyes. Long may I stare; her stony Fate denies The vision of her, though tired Fancy's sight Scrawl with pale curves the dead and scornful night. All the night's full of questing flights and calls Of owls and bats, white owls from time-struck walls, Bats with their shrivelled speech and dragonish wings. Beneath, a strange step crunches the ash path where None goes so late, I know: the mute vast air Wakes to a great sigh. Now the murmurings, Cricks, rustlings, knocks, all forms of tiny sound That have long been happening in my room half-heard, Grow fast and fierce, each one a ghostly word. I feel the grutching pixies hedge me round; "Folly" sneers courage (and flies). Stealthily creaks The threshold, fingers fumble, terror speaks, And bursting into sweats I muffle deep My face in pillows, praying for merciful sleep. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MOTHER TO SON by JAMES LANGSTON HUGHES ON VISITING THE TOMB OF BURNS by JOHN KEATS A CHILD'S SONG OF CHRISTMAS by MARJORIE LOWRY CHRISTIE PICKTHALL SONGS OF TRAVEL: 46. EVENSONG by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON WALLS by WILLIAM HERVEY ALLEN JR. UNCLE AN' AUNT by WILLIAM BARNES TO SIR THOS. BARLOW, P.R.C.P. by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES SONGS OF THE SEA CHILDREN: 100 by BLISS CARMAN TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. A VILLAGE CHURCH by EDWARD CARPENTER |