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Updated: May 29, 2025
Through the long and weary day he repines at his unhappy lot, and when evening approaches, and Phoebus, as he beautifully expresses it, had "bade farewell to every leaf and flower," he still lingers at the window, and, laying his head upon the cold stone, gives vent to a mingled flow of love and sorrow, until, gradually lulled by the mute melancholy of the twilight hour, he lapses, "half-sleeping, half swoon," into a vision, which occupies the remainder of the poem, and in which is allegorically shadowed out the history of his passion.
"Oh, if I could but huddle in with those poor laborers and working-women!" he would say to himself. "If I could but breathe that atmosphere, stifling though it be, yet made holy by ancient litanies, and cloudy with the smoke of hallowed incense, for one hour, instead of droning over these moral precepts to my half-sleeping congregation!"
I felt no disturbing curiosity concerning its contents; I was not annoyed at the want of the key; it was only that, like a nursery rhyme that keeps repeating itself over and over in the half-sleeping brain, this chest kept rising before me till I was out of patience with its intrusiveness. It brought me wide awake at last; and I thought, as I could not sleep, I would have a search for the key.
"At day-break the drivers passed by with their wagons for lumber. They found me and, recognizing me, laid me sleeping on a wagon and took me as far as our hut. There they awakened me, laid me down, and half-sleeping I didn't realize at once what had happened the day before. I ran to the hall and opened the door. "The rays of the rising sun struck our bedroom first the same that day.
Others are of rich earth, brought down by lazy water-ways from the fertile north and deposited at the river outlets. Tall marsh grasses grow profusely here, and hide alike water and land. Everywhere are slow-moving, half-sleeping bayous, winding and twisting interminably, and encircling multitudes of islands, which lie hidden behind a dense growth of rushes and reeds, twelve feet high.
"All right," exclaimed the half-sleeping young soldier, "bring in our rifles as well." The soldiers were lying on the benches and thus left for us only the floor. The stranger soon came back, brought the rifles and set them in the dark corner. He dropped the saddle pads on the floor, sat down on them and began to take off his boots.
I was in that dreamy state, half-sleeping half-waking, when I was aroused by a strange noise that sounded like a multitude of voices the voices of children. Raising my head I perceived the hunter in an attitude of listening. "What is it, Bob?" I inquired. "Dod rot me if I kin tell, Cap'n! Hyur, Rowl! what's all this hyur channerin?" "It's the araguatoes," muttered the Frenchman, half-asleep.
Both were insolent in prosperity, and abandoned themselves to luxuries and enjoyments. Yet it cannot be said that Demetrius, in his revelings and dissipations, ever let slip the time for action; pleasures with him attended only the superabundance of his ease, and his Lamia, like that of the fable, belonged only to his playful, half-waking, half-sleeping hours.
In the strange freaks of a half-sleeping fancy, in his dreams, he remembered to have heard the screech of a wild animal, and to have seen the face of Julia Markham, pale with the mingled expression of courage and fear. In the morning he found the front yard had a wild and tangled, and the garden a neglected look, and busied himself, with the boys, in improving their appearance.
Meanwhile his habit now began to inflict a punishment that often seemed beyond endurance. The increased quantities of morphia with which he sought to sustain himself, combined with his anxiety, remorse, and solicitude for his family and his own future, filled the hours of darkness with one long nightmare of horror. His half-sleeping visions were more vivid and real than the scenes of day.
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