BELLS JANGLED by JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

I LIE low-coiled in a nest of dreams;
The lamp gleams dim i' the odorous gloom,
And the stars at the casement leak long gleams
Of misty light through the haunted room
Where I lie low-coiled in dreams.

The night winds ooze o'er my dusk-drowned face
In a dewy flood that ebbs and flows,
Washing a surf of dim white lace
Under my throat and the dark red rose
In the shade of my dusk-drowned face.

There's a silken strand of some strange sound
Slipping out of a skein of song:
Eerily as a call unwound
From a fairy bugle, it slides along
In a silken strand of sound.

There's the tinkling drip of a faint guitar;
There's a gurgling flute, and a blaring horn
Blowing bubbles of tune afar
O'er the misty heights of the hills of morn,
To the drip of a faint guitar.

And I dream that I neither sleep nor wake --
Careless am I if I wake or sleep,
For my soul floats out on the waves that break
In crests of song on the shoreless deep
Where I neither sleep nor wake.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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