These Thoughts So Nearly Bordered On Nothing That,
Though I Was Not Sleepy, Yet I Fell Asleep.
Long before day, the moon
being still lustrous against a sky that yet contained a few faint
stars, I awoke shivering with cold.
In sleep there is something diminishes us. This every one has noticed;
for who ever suffered a nightmare awake, or felt in full consciousness
those awful impotencies which lie on the other side of slumber? When
we lie down we give ourselves voluntarily, yet by the force of nature,
to powers before which we melt and are nothing. And among the strange
frailties of sleep I have noticed cold.
Here was a warm place under the pines where I could rest in great
comfort on pine needles still full of the day; a covering for the
beasts underground that love an even heat - the best of floors for a
tired man. Even the slight wind that blew under the waning moon was
warm, and the stars were languid and not brilliant, as though
everything were full of summer, and I knew that the night would be
short; a midsummer night; and I had lived half of it before attempting
repose. Yet, I say, I woke shivering and also disconsolate, needing
companionship. I pushed down through tall, rank grass, drenched with
dew, and made my way across the road to the bank of the river. By the
time I reached it the dawn began to occupy the east.
For a long time I stood in a favoured place, just above a bank of
trees that lined the river, and watched the beginning of the day,
because every slow increase of light promised me sustenance.
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