WAKING

Lying beneath a hundred seas of sleep With all those heavy waves flowing over me, And I unconscious of the rolling night Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep

Risen, I felt the wandering seas no longer cover me But only air and light.... It was a sleep So dark and so bewilderingly deep

That only death's were deeper or completer, And none when I awoke stranger or sweeter. Awake, the strangeness still hung over me As I with far-strayed senses stared at the light.

I — and who was I? Saw — oh, with what unaccustomed eye! The room was strange and everything was strange Like a strange room entered by wild moonlight;

And yet familiar as the light swept over me And I rose from the night. Strange — yet stranger I. And as one climbs from water up to land

Fumbling for weedy steps with foot and hand, So I for yesterdays whereon to climb To this remote and new-struck isle of time. But I found not myself nor yesterday —

Until, slowly, from deep to lesser deep Risen, I felt the seas no longer over me But only air and light. Yes, like one clutching at a ring I heard

The household noises as they stirred, And holding fast I wondered. What were they? I felt a strange hand lying at my side, Limp and cool. I touched it and knew it mine.

A murmur, and I remembered how the wind died In the near aspens. Then Strange things were no more strange. I travelled among common thoughts again;

And felt the new forged links of that strong chain That binds me to myself, and this to-day To yesterday. I heard it rattling near With a no more astonished ear.

And I had lost the strangeness of that sleep, No more the long night rolled its great seas over me. — O, too anxious I! For in this press of things familiar

I have lost all that clung Round me awaking of strangeness and such sweetness Nothing now is strange Except the man that woke and then was I.