[BNP/E3, 31A – 15]

23

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 tost

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

That all night through

Hearing you sing,

While my breath sly

Oer my breast curled.

[15v]

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 feigned[1] choice

And a false right?

Lullaby, nurse,

Again for me.

Sing 'till I find

No more of breath[2]

My sense of curse[3]

More undefined 

Than life or death.

Thou art no more

My nurse that sings,

My childhood een

Made me again.

No, thou art the hour

Of sleep that brings

That scene no‑scene,

That pain no‑pain.

Hallowed and dim,

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.

........     7-9-1916

 
[1] feigned /wrong\
[2] No more /Sense-loss\ of breath /My heart less lone\
[3] My sense of curse /And life, its hearse\/Less close to be\