Read "Insomnia" by Madison Cawein online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It seems that dawn will never climb / The eastern hills; / And, clad in mist and flame and rime, / Make flashing highways of the rills.
The night is as an ancient way / Through some dead land, / Whereon the ghosts of Memory / And Sorrow wander hand in hand.
By which man's works ignoble seem, / Unbeautiful; / And grandeur, but the ruined dream / Of some proud queen, crowned with a skull.
A way past-peopled, dark and old, / That stretches far -- / Its only real thing, the cold / Vague light of sleep's one fitful star.