Half-Truth Sonnet

And there! Upon the moonlit, fleeting stair:

One, long blistered, broken man sat outstretched,

Though never reaching goal above that stair!

Others, above him, paler grew and retched

Out fouler things than any Hell had spawned

In the depths of their dark, infernal pits!

And sinning he when he but simply yawned!

Wishing to rest on that stair where he sits;

Sleep, they say, is for uncommitted souls,

Sleepers taken to be upon pyres heap’t

Searing endlessly on those fir’y coals,

How can one so, without ev’r having slept?