Classic Poem

Sweet , brief condition of oblivion,
Easer of care-worn mind and sorrowed soul;
Yea, next to death, God's most compassionate gift.

Thou art that short mortality wherein men
Give over their spirits to omnipotence,
That sea of faith whereon men launch their barks,
Undoubting of the hope of their return,
And float on opiate airs and favoring gales
Out to some land beyond these realms of earth,
And all its sad dominion, aching chain,
That gnaws men's vitals festering day by day.

The king, the galley-slave are equal here,
The sinner and the saint alike have peace,
A short forgetting of the angered hour,
The poisoned memory, or the woe to be.
Within thy mighty halls of phantasy
Thine opiate silence hangs its curtain black,
And ever the hideous dream is but a dream.

'Tis sweet to rise to greet the kindling morn,
When all is happiness, holy, glad and well:—
But to the agonized spirit, life's remorse,
Time's prisoners of failure, earth's defeat,
'Tis agony to wake, to meet the sun.
For these, O kind Magician, thou most true,
Give these, life's weary, woe's poor suffering ones,
Earth's mightiest blessing, dream-compelling sleep.