Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SLEEP, by FREDERICK WILLIAM HENRY MYERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SLEEP, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: How greatly good to fall outspread
Last Line: Descend the angel sleep!
Alternate Author Name(s): Myers, Frederic
Subject(s): Sleep


How greatly good to fall outspread
Full length at last upon my bed
And bid the world farewell!
Without a sound, without a spark,
Immersed and drowned in pitchy dark
And silence audible!

One living breath thro' the utter gloom,
Let pure Night's presence in the room
Keep cool the voiceless hours:—
Black Night's inodorous airs austere,
More searching and more strongly dear
Than Zephyr on the flowers!

Then from my wearied brain decay
The feverous fragments of the day,
The thoughts that dance and die;
From life's exhausted cells they flow,
They throng and wander, whirl and go,
And what is left am I.

There leave me softly to regain
The spent secretion of the brain
From fountains darkly deep:
O come not! speak not! let me be,
Till from the heaven of heavens on me
Descend the angel Sleep!





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