Merciful is Sleep – with such Ancient
Harm taking Constant place around us²
Charm me Asleep, and Melt me so, that,
Ravish’d hence I go: away in easy Slumbers³
The Waking have One Common World but the
Sleeping turn aside each into a world of its Own⁴
Sleep is no longer a Recuperation of vital forces –
But an Oblivion: a nightly brush with Annihilation⁵
Returning from the vaulted domes of our Colossal
Sleep, we come home to find a tall Metropolis of
Catacombs erected in the Gangways of our mind⁶
Let Placid Slumbers soothe each Weary Mind –
At morn to wake more Heav’nly, more Refin’d⁷
Let Stil Silence trew night-watches keepe, that
Sacred Peace may in its Assurance Rayne, and
Tymely Sleep, when it is tyme to Sleepe, may
Poure his limbs forth on your pleasant Playne⁸
Before you are Emptied for Sleep, What
Are you? And when you’re Emptied for
Sleep, you are Not – and when you’re
Filled with Sleep, you Never Were⁹
Tired Children Placid Sleep –
Thro’ Centuries of Noon¹⁰
¹ C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
² Joanna Klink, The Graves
³ Robert Herrick, To Music, to Becalm His Fever
⁴ Heraclitus tr. John Burnet, quoted in Early Greek Philosophy
⁵ J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
⁶ Sylvia Plath, Dooms of Exile
⁷ Phillis Wheatley, An Hymn to the Evening
⁸ Edmund Spencer, Epithalamion
⁹ William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
¹⁰ Emily Dickinson, Where Bells No More Affright the Morn