Poems (Mansfield)/Sleeping Together

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4658251Poems — Sleeping TogetherKatherine Mansfield
SLEEPING TOGETHER
Sleeping together . . . how tired you were . . .
How warm our room . . . how the firelight spread
On walls and ceiling and great white bed!
We spoke in whispers as children do,
And now it was I—and then it was you
Slept a moment, to wake—"My dear,
I'm not at all sleepy," one of us said. . .

Was it a thousand years ago?
I woke in your arms—you were sound asleep—
And heard the pattering sound of sheep.
Softly I slipped to the floor and crept
To the curtained window, then, while you slept,
I watched the sheep pass by in the snow.

O flock of thoughts with their shepherd Fear
Shivering, desolate, out in the cold,
That entered into my heart to fold!
A thousand years . . . was it yesterday
When we, two children of far away,
Clinging close in the darkness, lay
Sleeping together? . . . How tired you were. . .