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Vigil

Lived on one's back,

In the long hours of repose,

Life is a practical nightmare -Hideous asleep or awake.

Shoulders and

Ache—- -!

Ache, and the mattress,

Run into boulders and hummocks,

Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes -Tumbling, importunate, daft -Ramble and roll, and the gas,

Screwed to its lowermost,

An inevitable atom of light,

Haunts, and a stertorous

Snores me to hate and despair.

All the old

Surges malignant before me;

Old voices, old kisses, old

Blossom derisive about me;

While the new

Pass me in endless procession:

A pageant of

Silently, leeringly

On . . . and still on . . . still on!

Far in the stillness a

Languishes loudly.  A

Falls, and the

Lurch to the leap of the flame.  The next man to

Turns with a moan; and the snorer,

The drug like a rope at his throat,

Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse,

Noiseless and strange,

Her bull's eye half-lanterned in apron,(Whispering me, 'Are ye no sleepin' yet?'),

Passes, list-slippered and peering,

Round . . . and is gone.

Sleep comes at last -Sleep full of dreams and misgivings -Broken with brutal and

Voices and sounds that impose on me,

Ere I can wake to it,

The unnatural, intolerable day.

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William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley (23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903) was an English poet, writer, critic and editor in late Victorian England. Though he wrote …

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