Dear friends, I lay awake in the night
When I sung of the willow-tree
And I thought, as I lay awake in the light,
Of what you had said to me.

For you remember how you had said,
That I should be a poet
Ah me: it almost made me sad,
As I lay in the light, to know it.

For I knew, as every poet does,
What a poet ought to be:
Straightway before me there uprose,
My hideous sins to me.

Sweet friends[,] I pray you pray for me
To Him Whose hands are pierced
That, as, on the breast of His Mother, He,
So I on His breast may be nursed.
William.