free-verse8 lines
Prologue: In Darkness
by Sir John Collings SquireWith my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why do I lie awake,
Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling my heart's fierce ache
That beats one response to the brain's many questionings, and in solitude bears the weight
Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the senseless pressure of fate?
Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so certainly it recurs?
In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here that a song first stirs?
Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, there will spring of a sudden, some time,
Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the thin-blown shape of a rhyme?