A poem by Sir William Orpen – when the living sleep and the dead awake

At Midnight.

Now that the living sleep

and the dead awake

joy shall return to me

and my cold hands take

Here at the midnight hour

I shall feel again

love in a kiss, and then

the resulting pain

But when the dawn shall speed

with its stealth and flash

Deep in my heart the fire

shall again be ash.

______

When the living sleep and the dead awake etc,etc, Huddersfield (1906) by Sir William Orpen (Self-portrait).

Orpen painted portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wertheimer between 1904 and 1908.

Post by Dominic Lee, Orpen Research Archives.