The Pains Of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay

It hath not been my use to pray

With moving lips or bended knees

But silently, by slow degrees

My spirit I to Love compose

In humble trust mine eye-lids close

With reverential resignation

No wish conceived, no thought expressed

Only a sense of supplication

A sense o'er all my soul impressed

That I am weak, yet not unblessed

Since in me, round me, every where

Eternal Strength and Wisdom are

But yester-night I prayed aloud

In anguish and in agony

Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me

Sense of intolerable wrong

And whom I scorned, those only strong

Thirst of revenge, the powerless will

Still baffled, and yet burning still

Desire with loathing strangely mixed

On wild or hateful objects fixed

Fantastic passions ! maddening brawl

And shame and terror over all

Deeds to be hid which were not hid

Which all confused I could not know

Whether I suffered, or I did

For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe

My own or others still the same

Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame

So two nights passed, the night's dismay

Saddened and stunned the coming day

Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me

Distemper's worst calamity

The third night, when my own loud scream

Had waked me from the fiendish dream

O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild

I wept as I had been a child

And having thus by tears subdued

My anguish to a milder mood

Such punishments, I said, were due

To natures deepliest stained with sin

For aye entempesting anew

The unfathomable hell within

The horror of their deeds to view

To know and loathe, yet wish and do

Such griefs with such men well agree

But wherefore, wherefore fall on me

To be beloved is all I need

And whom I love, I love indeed