To Charles Brasch
Preface
Part One
Sleep Will Come Singly • A Ballad of Bad Omens • The Tempest • Sea Legend • Fire Without Phoenix • The Time of the Eagle • And I, In Arcady • The Beachcomber • For One Flying • A Handful of Sea Shells • A Figure at the Window • Island
Part Two
Ceremony of Pain • Dream • Soldier's Pay • Monastic Ruins • A Performance of Death & The Maiden • At a Holy Well • From a Train in the Midlands • In Radcliffe Square, Oxford • The Streets of My City • In the Fields of My Father's Youth • Colophon—The Poet to his Book
Source: Oliver, W. H., Fire Without Phoenix: Poems 1946-1954. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1957
Electronic source: Fire Without Phoenix: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
Sleep Will Come Singly
Sleep will come singly and the night will blind
With unnumbered fountains every closing eye
And whisper solitudes to crowded minds.
Sleep will be despot of these darkened hours
And wilfully administer his peace
Till, recognised in dreams the world is drowned
In a ghostly horde of petals and dead leaves.
Then will the meek man find his blood restored,
Tall as an antelope walk through bright fields,
Speak with a flower in his tongue and listen to men
With a bird in the cage of his ear; on the limbs
Of improbable trees climb to heaven again.
Sleep will leave morning amazed with power
And, speaking from the high inchoate night
Will tell each little world its character.