Noah Vale

Come heavy sleep, the image of true death;
and close up these my weary weeping eyes:
Whose spring of tears doth stop my vital breath,
and tears my heart with sorrow's sigh-swoll'n cries:
Com and possess my tired thought worne soul,
That living dies, till thou on me be stole.

Come shadow of my end, and shape of rest,
Allied to death, child to black-fac'd night:
Come thou and charm these rebels in my breast,
Whose waking fancies do my mind affright.
O come sweet sleep; come, or I die forever:
Come ere my last sleep comes, or come never.

Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amound to knowing whom I "haunt." I must admit that this last word is misleading, tending to establish between certain beings and myself relations that are stranger, more inescapable, more disturbing than I intended. Such a word means much more than it says, makes me, still alive, play a ghostly part, evidently referring to what I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am.