Sleep hath its own world

Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving
Lock me in delight awhile;
Let some pleasing dreams beguile
All my fancies; that from thence
I may feel an influence,
All my powers of care bereaving!

Though but a shadow, but a sliding
Let me know some little joy!
We that suffer long annoy
Are contented with a thought
Through an idle fancy wrought;
O let my joys have some abiding!

John Fletcher

But still let Silence trew night-watches keepe,
That sacred Peace may in assurance rayne,
And tymely Sleep, when it is time to sleep,
May pour his limbs forth on your pleasant playne;
The whiles an hundred little winged loves
Like divers-fethered doves,
Shall fly and flutter round about your bed.

Edmund Spenser

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose
On this afflicted prince; fall like a cloud
In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud
Or painful to his slumbers,—easy, sweet
And as a purling stream, thou son of Night,
Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain
Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain,
Into this prince gently, oh gently, slide
And kiss him into slumbers like a bride.

John Fletcher

God hath set
Labor and rest, as day and night, to men
Successive, and the timely dew of sleep
Now falling with soft, slumberous weight inclines
Our eyelids.

John Milton

Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast'
Would I were sleep and peace so sweet to rest

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

Come, Sleep. O, Sleep! The certain knot of peace,
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
The indifferent judge between the high and low.

Sir Philip Sidney

Close thine eyes, and sleep secure;
Thy soul is safe, thy body sure.
He that guards thee, he that keeps,
Never slumbers, never sleeps.
A quiet conscience in the breast
Has only peace, has only rest.
The wisest and the mirth of kings
Are out of tune unless she sings:
Then close thine eyes in peace and sleep secure,
No sleep so sweet as thine, no rest so sure.

Charles I, King of England

Oh, Brahma, guard in sleep
The merry lambs and the complacent kine,
The flies below the leaves and the young mice
In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks
Of red flamingo; and my love Vijaya,
And may no restless fay, with fidget finger
Trouble his sleeping; give him dreams of me.

William B Yeats

Solemnly, mournfully,
Dealing its dole,
The Curfew Bell
Is beginning to toll.

Cover the embers,
And put out the light;
Toil comes with morning,
And rest with the night.

Dark grow the windows,
And quenched is the fire;
Sound fades into silence,—
All footsteps retire.

No voice in the chambers,
No sound in the hall!
Sleep and oblivion
Reign over all!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound
Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught;
Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought
As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound
The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Our life is twofold: Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things mis-named
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils.
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;—

Lord Byron

O gentle Sleep! Do they belong to thee,
These twinklings of oblivion? Thou dost love
To sit in meekness, like the brooding Dove,
A captive never wishing to be free.

William Wordsworth

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it pleases 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.

John Keats