The hollow waking ere the cruel dawn
Has brought the fulness of my conscious pain,
The effort of the numb and weary brain
To know by what pale torture it is torn,
To comprehend the burden it has borne
Through fitful sleep, where ardent dreams would fain
Dispel the horror on the spirit lain,
And by fair visions cheat a fate forlorn.
Before I fully face the day's blank grief —
This misery of waking grips my soul,
Till fiercer anguish were perchance relief
And, better than so nebulous a goal,
The surer knowledge that no glad sunrise
Unrolls a radiant world to radiant eyes.