Sleep's Threshold

WHAT footstep but has wandered free and far
Amid that Castle of Sleep whose walls were planned
By no terrestrial craft, no human hand,
With towers that point to no recorded star ?
Here sorrows, memories, and remorses are,
Roaming the long dim rooms or galleries grand ;
Here the lost friends our spirits yet demand
Gleam through mysterious doorways, half ajar.

But of the uncounted throngs that ever win
These halls where slumber’s dusky witcheries rule,
Who, after weakening, may reveal aright
By what phantasmal means he entered in, —
What porch of cloud, what vapory vestibule,
What stairway quarried from the mines of night ?

Edgar Fawcett.