Down by Robert Graves — Read

Downstairs a clock had chimed, two o'clock only. / Then outside from the hen-roost crowing came. / But why should Shift-wing call against the clock, / Three hours from dawn? The shutters click and knock, / And he remembers a sad superstition / Unfitting for the sick-bed -- Turn aside, / Distract, divide, ponder the simple tales / That puzzled childhood; riddles, turn them over, / Half-riddles, answerless, the more intense! -- / Lost bars of music tinkling with no sense / Recur, drowning uneasy superstition.

Mouth open, he was lying, this sick man, / And sinking all the while; how had he come / To sink? On better nights his dream went flying, / Dipping, sailing the pasture of his sleep, / But now, since clock and cock, had sunk him down / Through mattress, bed, floor, floors beneath, stairs, cellars, / Through deep foundations of the manse; still sinking / Through unturned earth. How had he cheated space / With inadvertent motion or word uttered / Of too-close-packed intelligence (such there are) / That he should penetrate with sliding ease, / Dense earth, compound of ages, granite ribs / And groins? Consider, there was some word uttered, / Some abracadabra -- then like a stage-ghost, / Funereally with weeping, down, drowned, lost!