OW often, when I wake from sleep at night,
⁠I search my consciousness to find the ill
⁠That has lurked formlessly within it, still
Haunting me with a shadowy affright;
And try to seize it and to know aright
⁠Its vague proportions, and my frantic will
⁠Runs this way and runs that way, with a thrill
Of horror, to all things that ban or blight!
Then, when I find all well, it is as though
⁠The moment were some reef where I had crept
⁠⁠From the wide waste of danger and of death,
⁠⁠And for a little I might draw my breath
⁠Before the flood came up again, and swept
Over it, and gulfed me in its deeps below.