O ever--ever be thou blest!
For dearly, Asra! love I thee!
This brooding warmth across my breast, This depth of tranquil bliss--ah, me!
Fount, tree and shed are gone, I know not whither, But in one quiet room we three are still together.
The shadows dance upon the wall, By the still dancing fire-flames made; And now they slumber moveless all!
And now they melt to one deep shade!
But not from me shall this mild darkness steal thee: I dream thee with mine eyes, and at my heart I feel thee!
The visions born of opium floated in vague, rich phantasmagoria across his slumbrous brain,
And so, his senses gradually wrapt In a half-sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
--sitting in the failing firelight. With a great effort he roused himself to creep up the stair-ladder, and to lay his drugged limbs upon the hard straw bed. The child and Sara were already dreaming: he gazed at them with serene affection:
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the interspersed vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness, thus to look at thee!
and lastly, with all the mental power yet left him, he committed himself to the G.o.d of whom he was so weak, so well-intentioned a worshipper:
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, It hath not been my use to pray With moving lips or bended knees; But silently, by slow degress, My spirit I to Love compose, In humble trust mine eye-lids close, With reverential resignation, No wish conceived, no thought expressed.
Only a _sense_ of supplication,-- A sense o"er all my soul impressed That I am weak, yet not unblest, Since in me, round me, every where Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
But now the stealthy narcotic utterly beclouded him: he sank away as through unfathomable gulfs of somnolence. Samuel Taylor Coleridge had closed another day.