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HER DREAM.

CLXXV.

Miss Kilmansegg took off her leg,
And laid it down like a cribbage-peg,
For the Rout was done and the riot:
The Square was hush’d; not a sound was heard;
The sky was gray, and no creature stirr’d,
Except one little precocious bird,
That chirp’d–and then was quiet.

CLXXVI.

So still without,–so still within;–
It had been a sin
To drop a pin–
So intense is silence after a din,
It seem’d like Death’s rehearsal!
To stir the air no eddy came;
And the taper burnt with as still a flame,
As to flicker had been a burning shame,
In a calm so universal.

CLXXVII.

The time for sleep had come at last;
And there was the bed, so soft, so vast,
Quite a field of Bedfordshire clover;
Softer, cooler, and calmer, no doubt,
From the piece of work just ravell’d out,
For one of the pleasures of having a rout
Is the pleasure of having it over.

CLXXVIII.

No sordid pallet, or truckle mean,
Of straw, and rug, and tatters unclean;
But a splendid, gilded, carved machine,
That was fit for a Royal Chamber.
On the top was a gorgeous golden wreath;
And the damask curtains hung beneath,
Like clouds of crimson and amber;

CLXXIX.

Curtains, held up by two little plump things,
With golden bodies and golden wings,–
Mere fins for such solidities–
Two cupids, in short,
Of the regular sort,
But the housemaid call’d them “Cupidities.”

CLXXX.

No patchwork quilt, all seams and scars,
But velvet, powder’d with golden stars,
A fit mantle for Night-Commanders!
And the pillow, as white as snow undimm’d
And as cool as the pool that the breeze has skimmed,
Was cased in the finest cambric, and trimm’d
With the costliest lace of Flanders.

CLXXXI.

And the bed–of the Eider’s softest down,
‘Twas a place to revel, to smother, to drown
In a bliss inferr’d by the Poet;
For if Ignorance be indeed a bliss,
What blessed ignorance equals this,
To sleep–and not to know it?

CLXXXII.

Oh bed! oh bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head;
But a place that to name would be ill-bred,
To the head with a wakeful trouble–
‘Tis held by such a different lease!
To one, a place of comfort and peace,
All stuff’d with the down of stubble geese,
To another with only the stubble!

CLXXXIII.

To one, a perfect Halcyon nest,
All calm, and balm, and quiet, and rest,
And soft as the fur of the cony–
To another, so restless for body and head,
That the bed seems borrow’d from Nettlebed,
And the pillow from Stratford the Stony!

CLXXXIV.

To the happy, a first-class carriage of ease,
To the Land of Nod, or where you please;
But alas! for the watchers and weepers,
Who turn, and turn, and turn again,
But turn, and turn, and turn in vain,
With an anxious brain,
And thoughts in a train
That does not run upon sleepers!

CLXXXV.

Wide awake as the mousing owl,
Night-hawk, or other nocturnal fowl,–
But more profitless vigils keeping,–
Wide awake in the dark they stare,
Filling with phantoms the vacant air,
As if that Crookback’d Tyrant Care
Had plotted to kill them sleeping.

CLXXXVI.

And oh! when the blessed diurnal light
Is quench’d by the providential night,
To render our slumber more certain!
Pity, pity the wretches that weep,
For they must be wretched, who cannot sleep
When God himself draws the curtain!