Like to some doubtful noise of creaking doors,
Heard by the watcher in a haunted house,
That keeps the rust of murder on the walls—
Held her awake. Or if she slept, she dream’d
An awful dream ...
... and with a cry she woke.
And all this trouble did not pass, but grew.”
There is Donatello, in Hawthorne’s “Transformation,” succumbing to a stupor, which he mistakes for such drowsiness as he has known in his innocent past life. There is Albert Maurice, in “Mary of Burgundy,” gazing on the Vert Gallant of Hannut as he lay in a deep, sweet sleep—so calm and tranquil, though within the walls of a prison, suffering from injuries, and exposed to constant danger; gazing with a sense of envy and regret, “which few, perhaps, can appreciate fully, who have not felt the sharp tooth of remorse begin its sleepless gnawings on the heart. He would not have disturbed such slumbers for the world; and, withdrawing again with a noiseless step, he retired to his own chamber, and cast himself down upon his bed, to snatch, at least, that heated and disturbed sleep, which was all the repose that he was ever more to know on earth.” To such as him can nothing bring back, in the hour and power of darkness, more than an embittered memory of times
“When that placid sleep came o’er him
Which he ne’er can know again.”