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In this one can hear the desperate fears
of a 14-year-old girl who had been wholly privately educated at home but was aware of the gathering storm on the world scene and in need of parental love and support.
Sleep (1938)
“Oh come here quickly!”
And as I called she came, and I was glad
For I was frightened of my lonely thoughts.
But she clasped me in her soft, dim arms,
And wrap’t me round with tender, shadowy dreams. So did I sleep.
Then knew no more that shattering fear,
Nor then did weep,
Helplessly staring at the blackness,
And listening to the solid silence –
Eternal, surging silence of the night;
Most strangely ‘live;
And I most strangely dead.
I must lie, it seems, forever unmoving, tense –
For ever, ever!
And the comforting dawn would never break
Oh! Never, never!
