WAKING

Lying beneath a hundred seas of sleep
With all those heavy waves flowing over me,
And I unconscious of the rolling night
Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep
Risen, I felt the wandering seas no longer cover me
But only air and light....

It was a sleep
So dark and so bewilderingly deep
That only death’s were deeper or completer,
And none when I awoke stranger or sweeter. 
Awake, the strangeness still hung over me
As I with far-strayed senses stared at the light.

I—­and who was I? 
Saw—­oh, with what unaccustomed eye! 
The room was strange and everything was strange
Like a strange room entered by wild moonlight;
And yet familiar as the light swept over me
And I rose from the night.

Strange—­yet stranger I.
And as one climbs from water up to land
Fumbling for weedy steps with foot and hand,
So I for yesterdays whereon to climb
To this remote and new-struck isle of time. 
But I found not myself nor yesterday—­

Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep
Risen, I felt the seas no longer over me
But only air and light. 
Yes, like one clutching at a ring I heard
The household noises as they stirred,
And holding fast I wondered.  What were they?

I felt a strange hand lying at my side,
Limp and cool.  I touched it and knew it mine. 
A murmur, and I remembered how the wind died
In the near aspens.  Then
Strange things were no more strange. 
I travelled among common thoughts again;

And felt the new forged links of that strong chain
That binds me to myself, and this to-day
To yesterday.  I heard it rattling near
With a no more astonished ear. 
And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep,
No more the long night rolled its great seas over me.

—­O, too anxious I! 
For in this press of things familiar
I have lost all that clung
Round me awaking of strangeness and such sweetness
Nothing now is strange
Except the man that woke and then was I.

THE FALL

  From that warm height and pure,
  The peak undreamed of out of heavy air
  Rising to heaven more strange and rare;
From that amazed brief sojourn, exquisite, insecure;

  Fallen from thence to this,
  From all immortal sunk to mortal sweet,
  To slow gross joys from joy so fleet,
Fallen to mere remembrance of unsustainable bliss....

  O harsh, O heavy air,
  Difficult endurance, pain of common things! 
  The slow sun east to westward swings,
The flat-faced moon climbs labouring with a senseless stare.

  From that inconceivable height——­
  O inward eyes that saw and ears that heard,
  Spiritual swift wings that stirred
In that warm-flushing air and unendurable light;