Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)

Night and Sleep

HOW strange at night to wake

And watch, while others sleep,

Till sight and hearing ache

For objects that may keep

The awful inner sense

Unroused, lest it should mark

The life that haunts the emptiness

And horror of the dark!

How strange the distant bay

Of dogs; how wild the note

Of cocks that scream for day,

In homesteads far remote;

How strange and wild to hear

The old and crumbling tower,

Amidst the darkness, suddenly

Take tongue and speak the hour!

Albeit the love-sick brain

Affects the dreary moon,

Ill things alone refrain

From life’s nocturnal swoon:

Men melancholy mad,

Beasts ravenous and sly,

The robber and the murderer,

Remorse, with lidless eye.

The nightingale is gay,

For she can vanquish night;

Dreaming, she sings of day,

Notes that make darkness bright;

But when the refluent gloom

Saddens the gaps of song,

Men charge on her the dolefulness,

And call her crazed with wrong.

If dreams or panic dread

Reveal the gloom of gloom,

Kiss thou the pillow’d head

By thine, and soft resume

The confident embrace;

And so each other keep

In the sure league of amity

And the safe lap of sleep.