SLEEP-CHASINGS.

1. I WANDER all night in my vision,

Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,

Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,

Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,

Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

2. How solemn they look there, stretched and still! How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles!

3. The wretched features of ennuyés, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sickgray faces of onanists,

The gashed bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-doored rooms, the sacred idiots, the newborn emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,

The night pervades them and infolds them.

4. The married couple sleep calmly in their bed - he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,

The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
And the mother sleeps, with her little child carefully
wrapped.

5. The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep, The prisoner sleeps well in the prison-the runaway son sleeps,

The murderer that is to be hung next day - how does he sleep?

And the murdered person - how does he sleep?

6. The female that loves unrequited sleeps, And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,

The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,

And the enraged and treacherous dispositionsall, all sleep.

7. I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worstsuffering and the most restless,

I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,

The restless sink in their beds-they fitfully sleep.

new beings appear,

The earth recedes from me into the night,

I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.

9. I go from bedside to bedside

I sleep close with

the other sleepers, each in turn,

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other

dreamers,

11. I am the ever-laughing—it is new moon and twilight, I see the hiding of douceurs—I see nimble ghosts whichever way I look,

Cache, and cache again, deep in the ground and sea, and where it is neither ground or sea.

12. Well do they do their jobs, those journeymen divine, Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if they could,

I reckon I am their boss, and they make me a pet besides,

And surround me and lead me, and run ahead when

I walk,

To lift their cunning covers, to signify me with stretched arms, and resume the way;

Onward we move! a gay gang of blackguards! w mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennar of joy!

13. I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that sto

in the box,

He who has been famous, and he who shall be famou after to-day,

The stammerer, the well-formed person, the waste or feeble person.

14. I am she who adorned herself and folded her hai expectantly,

My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

15. Double yourself and receive me, darkness!

Receive me and my lover too-he will not let me go without him.

16. I roll myself upon you as upon a bed

myself to the dusk.

- I resign

17. He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,

He rises with me silently from the bed.

18. Darkness! you are gentler than my lover—his flesh was sweaty and panting,

I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

19. My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all directions,

I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.

20. Be careful, darkness! already, what was it touched me?

I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he

are one,

I hear the heart-beat - I follow, I fade away.

21. O hot-cheeked and blushing! O foolish hectic! O for pity's sake, no one must see me now! my clothes were stolen while I was abed,

Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run?

22. Pier that I saw dimly last night, when I looked from the windows!

Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you
I will not chafe you,

and stay

I feel ashamed to go naked about the world.

23. I am curious to know where my feet stand

and

what this is flooding me, childhood or manhood and the hunger that crosses the bridge between.

24. The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking, Laps life-swelling yolks - laps ear of rose-corn, milky and just ripened;

The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,

And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and the best liquor afterward.

25. I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid, Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.

26. It is my face yellow and wrinkled, instead of the old woman's,

I sit low in a straw-bottom chair, and carefully darn my grandson's stockings.

27. It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,

I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid

earth.

28. A shroud I see, and I am the shroud

and lie in the coffin,

It is dark here under ground it is not evil or pain here it is blank here, for reasons.

29. It seems to me that everything in the light and ought to be happy,

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, him know he has enough.

30. I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming nak through the eddies of the sea,

His brown hair lies close and even to his head
he strikes out with courageous arms
himself with his legs,

he urg

I see his white body I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash hi
head-foremost on the rocks.

31. What are you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you ki him in the prime of his middle age?

32. Steady and long he struggles,

He is baffled, banged, bruised- he holds out while his strength holds out,

The slapping eddies are spotted with his bloodthey bear him away-they roll him, swing him, turn him,

His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruised on rocks,

Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.

33. I turn, but do not extricate myself,

Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness yet.

34. The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind — the wreck

guns sound,

The tempest lulls

through the drifts.

the moon comes floundering

35. I look where the ship helplessly heads end on-I hear the burst as she strikes - I hear the howls of dismay they grow fainter and fainter.

36. I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,

I can but rush to the surf, and let it drench me and freeze upon me.