Once seized by sleep I dreamt I was at captived at Bridewell where all trulls
and gillots go I knew the place for I’d picked hessian and oakum there
and taken flogging by a scourge of holly leaves Roped at the wrists
to one who walked ahead and one behind we came in from the fields and lay
upon the grave-cold ground under iron grates And in my dream I dreamt
another In high summer I saw momently a sparrow flit above a golden lea
and fly into the brumous wood where there was only rustling and silence
‘Tis Maud as swiftly gone as those wings crossing a yellow meadow
I dreamt thrice By a mizzling shore St. Cuthbert knelt on stones to pray
Ice in his beard frost silvering his steepled hands Two otters bounded
from the water and breathed upon his feet to warm them rolling back
and forth upon him they tried with their fur to dry his blue besobled skin
He had for solace sorrow longing winter want cold darkness death
Wind whistling across heath and moorlands saturating marshlands
and fens in their flux I dreamt a fourth The wide blackening sky of Albion
roared overhead and I wept that neither sun nor youth nor hope nor love
would come again I crawled into an hollow oak pulled lichen over me
Maud shall have no church or coffin song or blessing priest or cross
In the mews of the dream in a bark-beetled sepulchre Maud shall have
a glimmergowk to hoot her elegy shall nither there until the mawks
liquefy her skin boil at her heart with their white roilings her body
unhouselled her soul left to the earth and night extinguishing