Sleeping Together

Sleeping together… how tired you were…How warm our room… how the firelight

On walls and ceiling and great white bed!

We spoke in whispers as children do,

And now it was I—and then it was

Slept a moment, to wake—"My dear,

I'm not at all sleepy," one of us said….

Was it a thousand years ago?

I woke in your arms—you were sound asleep—And heard the pattering sound of sheep.

Softly I slipped to the floor and

To the curtained window, then, while you slept,

I watched the sheep pass by in the snow.

O flock of thoughts with their shepherd

Shivering, desolate, out in the cold,

That entered into my heart to fold!

A thousand years… was it

When we two children of far away,

Clinging close in the darkness,

Sleeping together?… How tired you were….