Poetry of Kansas

When Half Asleep


Between waking and sleeping come strange im-
              pressions,
      With queer nothings that creep in. stealing
              our senses,
When the Weird and Grotesque are holding
              their sessions,
      And have laid on the table place, moods and
              tenses.
 
Mystic time is it, then, when common sense ceases,
      And our fancies are vague, too vague, to be
            spoken;
At the moment in which our thoughts fall to
              pieces,
      And float in our minds, dismembered and
              broken.
 
What is not and what is then change their true
                  places,
      And our feelings take form, our fancies take
              color;
While vagaries abound, inswathed in rare graces
      And delusion grows rosy, as reason grows
              duller.

__John Edward Everett.

 

Quillings in Verse
John Edward Everett
(Smith Center, Kansas: ___. 1912)
Page 51

 
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