When Keats tossed, restlessly pursuing sleep,
And prayed for Lethe, or at least for dawn,
Did he ever rise from bed unworn,
Instead of wasting hours counting sheep,
To pen his verse by flickering candle-light?
I wake refreshed from five hours’ dream and slumber,
Bored with rest. The dark does not encumber
Me as it did Keats, and so I write.
In the quiet and the still of early hours,
When all the world’s asleep, even the birds,
I find I focus better on my words.
My mind seems better vested of its powers.
I think of Keats and all that wasted time
He could have used composing precious rhyme.