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? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CORTEGE FOR ROSENBLOOM by WALLACE STEVENS THE ESCAPE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: THE CANTICLE OF LOVE by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON ODE TO A LADY WHOSE LOVER WAS KILLED BY A BALL by GEORGE GORDON BYRON |