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 eyelids 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:     A lurid light, a trampling throng,     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.