So easily I sank, as always is the case
When to the whiskey's wiles I lose the race
To drunken ease, that frail but happy state
That leads to sleep without the bitter wait.

And in that dark, the hands they carried me
Unto a place, 'til now, I've yet to see
And placed me there, ere which I looked around
And cannot clearly bring to mind the smell,
the sky, the ground.

A fever-dream, it seemed, as oft is to me sent
When at the lonely night's long end I'm truly bent
And broken 'round that silent label's parchment tone
But this dream wasn't one that I have ever known.

A breeze I felt caress my flush'ed skin and then
Upon that northern air you came (you haven't come again)
Your eyes, that shock, that I was here, and had you known,
To me that night, to haunt my sleep you never
would have flown.

Your raven hair, you tucked aside, and in your eyes I met
A sadness deep, a yearning great and painful, circumspect
That if I didn't cling to this and burn it in my mind
I might have woke and lost forever what I've yet to find.

But quick! you broke my spellbound gaze, and with it came the cold
And just as you appeared, you left, and took with you a toll
On this poor bard, who for this long has suffered for his Muse
His drink his ink, his sorrow heavy, longing now for you.

Penned by my hand on the 8th of Phaestian, in the year 579 AF.