A GARDEN DIARY 137 



" Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse 

 up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these 

 drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep our eyes 

 open longer were but to act our Antipodes. 

 The huntsmen are up in America, and they are 

 already past their first sleep in Persia. But who 

 can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from 

 everlasting sleep ? or have slumbering thoughts 

 at that time when sleep itself must end, and, as 

 some conjecture, all shall awake again ? " 



Most melodious of rhetoricians, and most 

 whimsical of prose-poets, I bid you a good-night. 

 For by a coincidence which you would be the 

 first to appreciate, twelve o'clock is striking even 

 as I copy your last line, and I light a bedroom 

 candle with the sound of those dim prognosti- 

 cations, and thunderous conjectures of yours still 

 ringing sonorously about my ears. They do not 

 alarm me, however ; nay I would gladly carry 

 them with me past the ivory gate. For, as you 

 yourself say 



" Happy are they that go to bed with grand 

 music like Pythagoras, or have ways to compose 

 the fantastical spirit, whose unruly wanderings 

 take off inward sleep, filling our heads with 

 St. Anthony's visions, or the dreams of Lipara, 

 in the sober chambers of rest." 



