Our story started then. To sate their rage My father and my mother cut me off, And so we had bread problems from the first. He made but little clerking in the store, Besides his mind was on the law and books. These were the early tangles of our yarn. And I grew worried as the children came, Two sons at first, and I was far from well, One died at five years, and I almost died For grief at this. But down below all things, Far down below all tune or scheme of sound, Where no rests were, but only ceaseless dirge, Was my heart's _de profundis_, crying out My thirst for love, not thirst for his, but thirst For love that quenched it. But the only water That passed my lips was desert water, poisoned By arsenic from his rocks. My soul grew bitter, Then sweetened under the cross, grew bitter again. My life lay raving on the desert sands. To speak more plainly, sleep deserted me. I could not sleep for thought, and for a will That could not bend, but hoped that death or something Would take him from me, bring me love before My face was withered, as it is to-day. At last the doctor found me growing mad For lack of sleep. Why was I so, he asked. You must give up this psychic work and quit This psychic writing, let the spirits go. Well, it was true that years before I found I heard and saw with higher power, received Deep messages from spirits, from my boy Who passed away. And as to this, who knows?-- Surely no doctor--of this psychic power. You may be called neurotic, what is that? Perhaps it is the soul become so fine It leaves the body, or shakes down the body With energy too subtle for the body. But I was sleepless for these years, at last The secret lost of sleep, for seven days And seven nights could find no sleep, until I lay upon the lawn and pushed my head, As a dog does around, around, around. There was a devil in me, at one with me, And neither to be put out, nor yet subdued By help outside, and nothing to be done Except to find escape by knife, or pistol, And thus get sleep. Escape! Oh, that's the word! There's something in the soul that says escape! Fly, fly from something, and in truth, my friend, Life's restlessness, however healthful it be, Is motived by this urge to fly, escape: Well, to go on, they gave me everything, At last they gave me chloral, but no sleep! And finally I closed my eyes and quick The secret came to me, as one might find, After forgetting how, to swim, or walk, After a sickness, and for just two minutes I slept, and then I got the secret back, And later slept.