Page:Lyrics of Lowly Life Dunbar (1896).djvu/28

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Lyrics of Lowly Life.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes, How all the griefs and heartaches we have   known Come up like pois'nous vapors that arise  From some base witch's caldron, when the   crone, To work some potent spell, her magic plies.  The past which held its share of bitter pain, Whose ghost we prayed that Time might   exorcise,  Comes up, is lived and suffered o'er again, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.
Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,  What phantoms fill the dimly lighted room; What ghostly shades in awe-creating guise  Are bodied forth within the teeming gloom. What echoes faint of sad and soul-sick cries,  And pangs of vague inexplicable pain That pay the spirit's ceaseless enterprise,  Come thronging through the chambers of the   brain, Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

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