Lived on one's back, <br />In the long hours of repose, <br />Life is a practical nightmare - <br />Hideous asleep or awake. <br /> <br />Shoulders and loins <br />Ache-- -! <br />Ache, and the mattress, <br />Run into boulders and hummocks, <br />Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes - <br />Tumbling, importunate, daft - <br />Ramble and roll, and the gas, <br />Screwed to its lowermost, <br />An inevitable atom of light, <br />Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper <br />Snores me to hate and despair. <br /> <br />All the old time <br />Surges malignant before me; <br />Old voices, old kisses, old songs <br />Blossom derisive about me; <br />While the new days <br />Pass me in endless procession: <br />A pageant of shadows <br />Silently, leeringly wending <br />On . . . and still on . . . still on! <br /> <br />Far in the stillness a cat <br />Languishes loudly. A cinder <br />Falls, and the shadows <br />Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me <br />Turns with a moan; and the snorer, <br />The drug like a rope at his throat, <br />Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse, <br />Noiseless and strange, <br />Her bull's eye half-lanterned in apron, <br />(Whispering me, 'Are ye no sleepin' yet?'), <br />Passes, list-slippered and peering, <br />Round . . . and is gone. <br /> <br />Sleep comes at last - <br />Sleep full of dreams and misgivings - <br />Broken with brutal and sordid <br />Voices and sounds that impose on me, <br />Ere I can wake to it, <br />The unnatural, intolerable day.<br /><br />William Ernest Henley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/vigil-5/
