Classic Poem

Ode to Drowsihood

Breather of honeyed breath upon my face!
Teller of balmy tales! Weaver of dreams!
Sweet conjurer of palpitating gleams
And peopled shadows trooping into place
In purple streams
Between the drooped lid and the drowsy eye!
Moth-winged seducer, dusky-soft and brown,
Of bubble gifts and bodiless minstrelsy
Lavish enough! Of rest the restful crown!
At whose behest are closed the lips that sigh,
And weary heads lie down.

Thee, Nodding Spirit! Magic Comforter!
Thee, with faint mouth half speechless, I invoke,
And straight uplooms through the dead centuries' smoke
The aged Druid in his robe of fur,
Beneath the oak
Where hang uncut the paly mistletoes.
The mistletoe dissolves to Indian willow,
Glassing its red stems in the stream that flows
Through the broad interval. A lazy billow
Flung from my oar lifts the long grass that grows
To be the Naiad's pillow.

The startled meadow-hen floats off, to sink
Into remoter shades and ferny glooms;
The great bees drone about the thick pea-blooms;
The linked bubblings of the bobolink,
With warm perfumes
From the broad-flowered wild parsnip, drown my brain;
The grackles bicker in the alder-boughs;
The grasshoppers pipe out their thin refrain
That with intenser heat the noon endows.
Then thy weft weakens, and I wake again
Out of my dreamful drowse.

Ah! fetch thy poppy-baths, juices exprest
In fervid sunshine, where the Javan palm
Stirs, scarce awakened from its odorous calm
By the enervate wind, that sinks to rest
Amid the balm
And sultry silence, murmuring, half asleep,
Cool fragments of the ocean's foamy roar,
And of the surge's mighty throbs that keep
Forever yearning up the golden shore,
Mingled with song of Nereids that leap
Where the curled crests downpour.

Who sips thy wine may float in Baiae's skies,
Or flushed Maggiore's ripples, mindless made
Of storming troubles hard to be allayed.
Who eats thy berries, for his ears and eyes
May vineyard shade
Melt with soft Tuscan, glow with arms and lips
Cream-white and crimson, making mock at reason.
Thy balm on brows by care uneaten drips;
I have thy favors but I fear thy treason.
Fain would I hold thee by the dusk wing-tips
Against a grievous season.English