Poetry of John Keats (1795-1821)
To Sleep
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,--
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.
A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
That makes no show for dawn
By strech of limb or stir of lid, --
An independent one.
Was ever idleness like this?
Within a hut of stone
To bask the centuries away
Nor once look up for noon?
-Emily Dickinson
Link to what I think is a copy righted poem:
http://www.writers-voice.com/ABCDE/A/Alisha_Morgan_the_blackness_of_a_deep_sleep.htm
Shakespeare, of course:
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
MACBETH: Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--
CALIBAN: Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.