In the “Scrapbook” section of Radiohead.com, one randomized caption reads:
yes, tis the pulse of the life! my fears were in vain!
i wake i breathe, and myself again. don’t feel a thing.
This lines are an inexact quotation of Samuel Roger‘s “Verses Written To Be Spoken by Mrs. Siddons” from his 1814 Poems. The first eight lines form a verse paragraph:
Yes, ’tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain!
I wake, I breathe, and am myself again.
Still in this nether world; no seraph yet!
Nor walks my spirit, when the sun is set,
With troubled step to haunt the fatal board,
Where I died last–by poison or the sword;
Blanching each honest cheek with deeds of night,
Done here so oft by dim and doubtful light.
As this essay by Heather McPherson shows, Mrs. Siddons was a popular topic for late eighteenth-century poetry.