| |
| A SWIFT 1 dark dream from the outer lands, | |
| From the folk whose talk none understands, | |
| Along my smooth sleep travelling, | |
| Yet tampering not with my ken’s rest, | |
| Pass’d as undisturbingly | 5 |
| As a nightjar o’er the quietude | |
| Of the clear’d middle of a pine-wood | |
| Seemeth to haunt the evening, | |
| And leave the blue air yet more whist. | |
| And yesternight it haunted me; | 10 |
| Again, suddenly, quietly, | |
| Shadowy wings above my clear sleep. | |
| But swift, so swift it might scarce be seen; | |
| Not as with me it had to do, | |
| But eagerly, as though it flew | 15 |
| From mystery to mystery, | |
| And my sleep lay in between;— | |
| Once before, and yesternight. | |
| So twice I have felt its noiseless flight; | |
| Twice has my sleep been the road | 20 |
| The dark message took in journeying | |
| From the one to the other secret reign;— | |
| Out of the dark lying behind, | |
| Into that lying before, man’s mind, | |
| My sleep was the only bridge for the thing | 25 |
| Whereon to cross Reality. | |
| But the third time, if it come again, | |
| A stranger, unkindly from the abode | |
| Of Beginnings sent to the place of Dooms, | |
| Shewing me thus so easily | 30 |
| Way thro’ the skirts of time to the glooms | |
| That march both sides our bodily place,— | |
| My soul will up and give it chase; | |
| Out of my sleep my soul will slip | |
| And ere that duty vanisheth | 35 |
| I’ll o’ertake its moth-wing’d speed. | |
| And be it a bird softlier fledge | |
| Than white owl or brown nightjar, | |
| Be softer the down on the wing’s edge | |
| Than combing crests of a snowdrift are | 40 |
| Which the smooth wind holloweth, | |
| Of its shadowing I will be more aware | |
| Than a mirror is of a swoon’d man’s breath, | |
| To find the guidance that I need … | |
