How often, when I wake from sleep at night, I search my consciousness to find the ill That has lurked formlessly within it, still Haunting me with a shadowy affright; And try to seize it and to know aright Its vague proportions, and my frantic will Runs this way and runs that way, with a thrill Of horror, to all things that ban or blight! Then, when I find all well, it is as though The moment were some reef where I had crept From the wide waste of danger and of death, And for a little I might draw my breath Before the flood came up again, and swept Over it, and gulfed me in its deeps below. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TOWERS OF SIMON RODIA; FOR HOWARD W. SWENSON 1903-1081 by KAREN SWENSON VOICES OF THE NIGHT: PRELUDE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE SONG OF A TRAVELLER by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON NURSERY REMINISCENCES by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM FOR THE MASTER'S SAKE by MINNIE MASON BEEBE REUNITED LOVE by RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE THE FOOD OF THE SOUL by HARRY RANDOLPH BLYTHE SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 29 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING |