Poems (Mansfield)/Sleeping Together
SLEEPING TOGETHER
Sleeping together . . . how tired you were . . .How warm our room . . . how the firelight spreadOn walls and ceiling and great white bed!We spoke in whispers as children do,And now it was I—and then it was youSlept 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 creptTo the curtained window, then, while you slept,I watched the sheep pass by in the snow.
O flock of thoughts with their shepherd FearShivering, desolate, out in the cold,That entered into my heart to fold!A thousand years . . . was it yesterdayWhen we, two children of far away,Clinging close in the darkness, laySleeping together? . . . How tired you were. . .