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Midnight Speculations
Mortimer Collins

published in Selections from the Poetical Works of Mortimer Collins, page 54-55
by London, Richard Bentley & Son, New Burlington St., 1886



I
My Wife.

Strange : I sit here, and write my painful prose,
     And my sweet love is in the Land of Dreams,
     Where bloom weird flowers and murmur mystic streams,
And with wild wilful curve life's current flows,
So what will happen next no creature knows
     In that far region : some mad Demon seems
     To twist in puzzling knots the common themes
Of cheerful day.	Now, as her dear eyes close
Under fair lids that I have kissed so oft,
     Her spirit is a myriad leagues away
     Fast flitting o'er sea and land, or high in air
Borne by some wondrous witchery aloft.
     I want to travel on the self-same way :
     I want to follow and to find her there.

II
My Dog.

A mighty Pyrenean wolf-hound lies
     Beside me while I work or think or dream,
     And midnight passes like a mystic stream,
And in the icy blue of winter skies
Star after star grows wonderful and dies.
     To me those bright orbs yield no glory or gleam—
     Snug, curtained, and intent upon my theme—
Wrapt in myself.	Even so my great dog sighs,
Close at my feet, in visions of the chase
     Of wild wolves howling over hills of snow,
     Slain by his stalwart fathers long ago.
My thoughts within him find no resting-place :
     Of me he knows just what of him I know.
     Strange is the stern fate that hath made it so.