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Robert Laurence Binyon - Before Sleep Comes
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Where do you float from, visions that shine ere sleep
 Subdues with leaden law
 The dancing fires of the brain?--In a shadowy land,
 As a king from a tower I saw.

 There came startled gazelles, beautifully leaping,
 Delicate--hoofed: they were gone,
 And the red pomegranate showered its petalled bloom
 On the glittering stream alone.

 I saw the dust on an Indian plain, and a grove
 Where pilgrims went in white:
 I saw the mountains, throned upon purple air,
 Remote in sculptured light.

 And I saw the broadening beams of the early sun
 On the pale Pacific melt,
 And naked fishermen, idly rocked in a boat;
 Their briny nets I smelt.

 I saw amid Asian deserts a bed of reeds,
 And a heron slowly rose
 To the cloud from wild reeds blown by a wind that came
 From a land no man yet knows.

 And I watched a tall ship gliding out of the mist
 By a snow--seamed iron cape.
 The smoky wraiths clung round her, but on she stemmed,
 Self--willed, a wing--bright shape.

 Then all fell dark. Yet still in a trance elate,
 And strange to myself I lay.
 Here was the black, soft stillness: but where was I?
 Far away, far away.
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