Jephthah and Other Mysteries

LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC. 139 Not as when sunlight strikes the counterpane, Half wakening, sleep rolls back her iron wave, And dawn brings blithesomeness ; Not as when opiates lull the tortured brain And sprinkle lotus on the drowsy grave Of earth’s old bitterness; But as when consciousness half rouses up And hurls back all the gibbering harpy crowd ; And sleep’s draught deepeneth, And all the furies of hell’s belly sup In the brain’s palaces, and chant aloud Songs that foretaste of Death. Maddened, the brain breaks from beneath the goad, Flings off again the foe, and from its hell Brings for a moment peace, Till weariness and her infernal load Of phantom memory-shapes return to quell The shaken fortresses. Till nature reassert her empery, And the full tide of wakefulness at last Foam on the shore of sleep To beat the white cliffs of reality In vain, because their windy strength is past And only memories weep. Why is the Finite real? And that world So larger, and more beautiful, and fleet, So free, so exquisite,