The Nightmare Lies Awake

I don't want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I begin to live. - Thoreau

Sleep and His Half-Brother Death - Oil on Canvas

by John William Waterhouse 1894

you dance in folly

enslaved hand puppet of time

sleep's mortal minion

Author's Note

"But let us hear a strain of music, we are at once advertised of a life which no man had told us of, which no preacher preaches. Suppose I try to describe faithfully the prospect which a strain of music exhibits to me. The field of my life becomes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death nor disappointment at the end of it. All meanness and trivialness disappear. I become adequate to any deed. No particulars survive this expansion; persons do not survive it. In the light of this strain there is no thou nor I. We are actually lifted above ourselves." - Thoreau

Reviews

[Thomas W Case]

There’s a sharp, ancient sting in this—time pulling the strings while sleep finishes the job. It feels like a small poem carrying a much larger dread.

[Pete]

all true. thanks for the insight.