Looking Forward

Christina Georgina Rossetti

    Sleep, let me sleep, for I am sick of care;
Sleep, let me sleep, for my pain wearies me.
    Shut out the light; thicken the heavy air
  With drowsy incense; let a distant stream
  Of music lull me, languid as a dream,
Soft as the whisper of a Summer sea.

    Pluck me no rose that groweth on a thorn,
Nor myrtle white and cold as snow in June,
    Fit for a virgin on her marriage morn:
  But bring me poppies brimmed with sleepy death,
  And ivy choking what it garlandeth,
And primroses that open to the moon.

    Listen, the music swells into a song,
A simple song I loved in days of yore;
    The echoes take it up and up along
  The hills, and the wind blows it back again.—
  Peace, peace, there is a memory in that strain
Of happy days that shall return no more.

    Oh peace, your music wakeneth old thought,
But not old hope that made my life so sweet,
    Only the longing that must end in nought.
  Have patience with me, friends, a little while:
  For soon where you shall dance and sing and smile,
My quickened dust may blossom at your feet.

    Sweet thought that I may yet live and grow green,
That leaves may yet spring from the withered root,
    And buds and flowers and berries half unseen;
  Then if you haply muse upon the past,
  Say this: Poor child, she hath her wish at last;
Barren through life, but in death bearing fruit.

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