Explore "The Pains of Sleep" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, / It hath not been my use to pray / With moving lips or bended knees; / But silently, by slow degrees, / My spirit I to Love compose, / In humble trust mine eye-lids close, / With reverential resignation, / No wish conceived, no thought exprest, / Only a _sense_ of supplication; / A sense o'er all my soul imprest / That I am weak, yet not unblest, / Since in me, round me, everywhere / Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
But yester-night I pray'd aloud / In anguish and in agony, / Up-starting from the fiendish crowd / Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: / A lurid light, a trampling throng, / Sense of intolerable wrong, / And whom I scorned, those only strong! / Thirst of revenge, the powerless will / Still baffled, and yet burning still! / Desire with loathing strangely mixed / On wild or hateful objects fixed. / Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! / And shame and terror over all! / Deeds to be hid which were not hid, / Which all confused I could not know / Whether I suffered, or I did: / For all seem'd guilt, remorse or woe, / My own or others still the same / Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame!