With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why
do I lie awake,
Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling
my heart's fierce ache
That beats one response to the brain's many questionings,
and in solitude bears the weight
Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the
senseless pressure of fate?
Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so
certainly it recurs?
In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here
that a song first stirs?
Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory,
there will spring of a sudden, some time,
Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the
thin-blown shape of a rhyme?