My Day of Life + 

I know not how it is⁠—it seems + 

Fantastic and surprising + 

That after all these dreams and dreams, + 

Here in the sun’s first level beams, + 

The sun is still just rising! + 

When first he showed his sovereign face, + 

And bade the night-folk scuttle + 

Back to their holes, I took my place + 

Here on the hill, and God His grace + 

Sent slumber soft and subtle. + 

Among the poppies red and white, + 

I’ve lain and drowsed, for all it + 

Appears a sluggardly delight. + 

I must have had a wakeful night, + 

Though, faith, I don’t recall it. + 

And, O I’ve dreamed so many things! + 

One hardly can unravel + 

The tangled web of visionings + 

That slumber-of-the-morning brings: + 

Play, study, work and travel; + 

The love of women (mostly those + 

Were fairest that were newest); + 

Hard knocks from friends and other foes: + 

Compacts with men (my memory shows + 

The deadest are the truest); + 

War⁠—what a hero I became + 

By merely dreaming battle! + 

Athwart the field of letters, Fame + 

Blared through the brass my weary name + 

With an ominous death-rattle. + 

Such an eternity of thought + 

Within a minute’s fraction! + 

Such phantoms out of nothing wrought, + 

And fading suddenly to naught + 

As I awake to action! + 

They scamper each into its hole, + 

These dreams of my begetting. + 

They’ve had their moment; take, my soul, + 

Thy day of life.⁠ ⁠… Gods! this is droll⁠— + 

That thieving sun is setting! + 