The Pains of Sleep

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1. Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
2. It hath not been my use to pray
3. With moving lips or bended knees;
4. But silently, by slow degrees,
5. My spirit I to Love compose,
6. In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
7. With reverential resignation,
8. No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
9. Only a _sense_ of supplication;
10. A sense o'er all my soul imprest
11. That I am weak, yet not unblest,
12. Since in me, round me, everywhere
13. Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
14.  
15. But yester-night I pray'd aloud
16. In anguish and in agony,
17. Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
18. Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
19. A lurid light, a trampling throng,
20. Sense of intolerable wrong,
21. And whom I scorned, those only strong!
22. Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
23. Still baffled, and yet burning still!
24. Desire with loathing strangely mixed
25. On wild or hateful objects fixed.
26. Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
27. And shame and terror over all!
28. Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
29. Which all confused I could not know
30. Whether I suffered, or I did:
31. For all seem'd guilt, remorse or woe,
32. My own or others still the same
33. Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame!
34.  
35. So two nights passed: the night's dismay
36. Saddened and stunned the coming day.
37. Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
38. Distemper's worst calamity.
39. The third night, when my own loud scream
40. Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
41. O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
42. I wept as I had been a child;
43. And having thus by tears subdued
44. My anguish to a milder mood,
45. Such punishments, I said, were due
46. To natures deepliest stained with sin:
47. For aye entempesting anew
48. The unfathomable hell within
49. The horror of their deeds to view,
50. To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
51. Such griefs with such men well agree,
52. But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
53. To be beloved is all I need,
54. And whom I love, I love indeed.