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.” 
