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War and Love/Sleep

From Wikisource
For works with similar titles, see Sleep.

Boston: The Four Seas Company, page 89

SLEEP

If but to sleep alone be fair
    As poets say,
How piercing sweet to lie all night
    Until the day
With all her flower-like body pressed
    Close unto mine,
To feel her moving heart, to taste
    Her breath like wine,
To hold her pointed, smooth, soft breast
    In one firm hand
And let the other lie at rest
    In love's own land.

Ah, it were good to cease and die
    So sweet a way,
Never to waken from her bed
    To the chill day,
But sleep forever in a dream
    Head beside head,
Warm in a golden swoon of love—
    Divinely dead.