Where do you float from, visions that shine ere sleep <br />Subdues with leaden law <br />The dancing fires of the brain?--In a shadowy land, <br />As a king from a tower I saw. <br /> <br />There came startled gazelles, beautifully leaping, <br />Delicate--hoofed: they were gone, <br />And the red pomegranate showered its petalled bloom <br />On the glittering stream alone. <br /> <br />I saw the dust on an Indian plain, and a grove <br />Where pilgrims went in white: <br />I saw the mountains, throned upon purple air, <br />Remote in sculptured light. <br /> <br />And I saw the broadening beams of the early sun <br />On the pale Pacific melt, <br />And naked fishermen, idly rocked in a boat; <br />Their briny nets I smelt. <br /> <br />I saw amid Asian deserts a bed of reeds, <br />And a heron slowly rose <br />To the cloud from wild reeds blown by a wind that came <br />From a land no man yet knows. <br /> <br />And I watched a tall ship gliding out of the mist <br />By a snow--seamed iron cape. <br />The smoky wraiths clung round her, but on she stemmed, <br />Self--willed, a wing--bright shape. <br /> <br />Then all fell dark. Yet still in a trance elate, <br />And strange to myself I lay. <br />Here was the black, soft stillness: but where was I? <br />Far away, far away.<br /><br />Robert Laurence Binyon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/before-sleep-comes-2/
