Explore "Before the Dawn" by Virna Sheard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In that one darkest hour, before the dawn is here, / Each soul of us goes sailing, close to the coast of Fear.
There in the windless quiet, from out the folded black, / The things we have forgotten -- or would forget -- come back.
Old sorrows, long abandoned, or kept with lock and key, / Steal from their prison places to bear us company.
All softly come our little sins -- our scarlet sins -- and gray. / To keep with us a vigil till breaking of the day.
And there are velvet footsteps; or oft we seem to hear / Light garments brush against the dark; so near -- so very near!
From out the red confusion where men long watches keep, / New shadows come -- we know they come -- and in the dark we weep.
Then heavily, as weighed by tears, each haunted moment goes, / For dawn steps down the morning sky, in robes of gray and rose.
O fairies of the forest-ring, and little men in green, / And pixies of the moonlight, and elves no eye hath seen, / Brew us a magic potion, of deep and fairy power, / A draught of Lethe -- for one night -- to tide us past that hour.