THE WRONG CHOICE


THE NIGHT LIGHT

Nurse, I known now
That love is vain.
When I was small
You used to sing
And soothe my brow
Till calm seemed pain.
That song recall
And to me bring.

I wish to feel
Again that child
That you made sleep
Singing so low,
So low that real
Things were beguiled
To make me weep
At seeing them go.

Nurse, by my bed
Sing me again
That song. I love
Hoping for't now.
My heart has bled
Till joy seems pain.
Sing softly above
My caressed brow

O regions lost
In dreams and sleep!
O fairy tales
You did not tell,
But that were tossed
Out of the deep
Of your song's waves
And surge and spell!

Sing as if you
Were listening.
Sing as if I
Had no more world
Than all night through
Hearing you sing,
While my breath sly
On my breast curled.

Why did I live
Beyond those hours
When you sung songs
Perhaps of queens
My dream believes,
Perhaps of flowers,
Whose lost scent throngs
Through my sense-screens?

Why did I lose
What I had not
But was your voice,
My heart and night?
Why did I choose
Life, love and thought,
With a wrong choice
And a false right?

Lullaby nurse,
Again for me.
Sing 'till I find
My heart less lone,
And life, life's hearse,
Leaving dreams free,
Shrink undefined
Into the Unknown.

You are no more
My nurse that sings,
My childhood een
Made me again.
No: you are the hour
Of sleep, that brings
That scene no-scene,
That pain no-pain;

Hallowed and dim,
Brotherly night,
Wherein my soul
Is haunted past
The hollow rim
Of my delight
And the low dole
Of pain and haste;

Merged in the dark,
Sunk past the bed
Into a peace
Of being nought,
Shadowy bark
Abandoned,
Abstract release
From self and thought.