European Elegies/Spring/Tears of sleep
66.TEARS OF SLEEP
Fair, fragrant morning, bring release from dreamsAnd drive the phantoms of my sleep away!Dissolve my restless phantasies in day,And cleanse my troubled mind from night's extremes!
For corpses, pale and wan as withered limes,Have haunted the strange chaos of my brain:Shades of mute Hecate and all the slainSad sons of Priamus of olden times.
And there the mother, stricken beyond tears,Made futile sacrifice without a moanAnd hid her sorrow in her ancient breast.
But thou, my heart, that grief has turned to stone,Hast wept in sleep for her, as dim appearsStalactite-drip far down a cave's dark rest.
From the Romaic of I. N. Grypares.