This is your nursing mother, this is sleep,
And milk of darkness. Dedicated lie
With graspless hands. Or is this the bottom of the sea?

Now let my fancy wander a little while.
I am a rock a thousand fathoms sunk,
Dark and for ever immobile. My thoughts
Like droves of silvery, soundless fish appear
And visit me, and pass, who wave-lapped lie.

When I was a child, I used to think the elves
So curled round safely in the centre of flowers.
White, perfect-petalled roses lapped them round
Through all night's darkness; with the light they woke
And shook the pollen from their heads, and danced
On tippety toes.
Or, next, I am that Princess
I dreamed in youth, with eyes like hazel pools
And gold-encircled head. She has left the lawns
Where peacocks with their furled embroidered tails
Sleep on the balustrades; left far behind
Lit galleries and gallants, lutanists,
And long-curled princes with their captured eyes.
She has laid aside her green embroideries,
With slender fingers lifted off her crown
And won this wealth of solitude. Yet she,
So lovely, lying in her silken sheets,
Is no more safe than I am.
I am safe
As all wild creatures. In their burrows deep,
Rooty and dark, the furred rabbits lie
Safe till to-morrow's dewy nibbling dawn,
And somewhere, unimaginably far,
Striped tigers with their sleep-enchanted paws
In eastern caverns.
Why, I am so safe
That if an ichthyosaurus came outside
In the bright moon, and with soft primitive paws
Snuffed at the window-pane, I should not stir!
I should not stir though all the garden filled
With monsters humping to the star-strewn sky;
I am too remotely safe in this dark bed.

I think my bed is a fortress on a rock.
Now faintly, as I lie unreachable,
I hear the wash and roar of the waves of care,
I hear the retreating shingle of desire
Pour away, far off. O this falling night,
Coming to me, the haggard, as to a child,
A child with sealed eyes, innocent as a flower,
Hearing with tender ears what soundless truth?
Absorbing wisdom, what strange wisdom is it?

Sleep, both are yours and my entire need,
My sustenance and peace. In the chaos of day
On far tomorrow's shore I shall come in vain,
Rootless and starved, unless I taste them now;
Now as my phantasies foldward drift like sheep
Receive another child, my mother Sleep.