Before Sleep
Before Sleep - meaning Summary
Mythic Attendants Before Sleep
Pound’s poem presents a speaker between wakefulness and sleep, surrounded by ambiguous, lateral sensations that both soothe and manipulate. Mythic figures—Anubis and Pallas—appear as attendants or guides, mixing underworld and martial imagery. The speaker feels pulled by drugged sleep yet calls for light and ascent, expressing a desire to follow an inspiring, upward force. The poem compresses motion, ritual, and the tension between submission and a striving toward clarity.
Read Complete AnalysesThe lateral vibrations caress me, They leap and caress me, They work pathetically in my favour, They seek my financial good. She of the spear stands present. The gods of the underworld attend me, O Annubis, These are they of thy company. With a pathetic solicitude they attend me; Undulant, Their realm is the lateral courses. Light! I am up to follow thee, Pallas. Up and out of their caresses. You were gone up as a rocket, Bending your passages from right to left and from left to right In the flat projection of a spiral. The gods of drugged sleep attend me, Wishing me well; I am up to follow thee, Pallas.
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