Poetry and Sleep
Hypnos and Thanatos
My Sister’s Sleep
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
At length the long-ungranted shade
Of weary eyelids overweigh’d
The pain nought else might yet relieve.
Our mother, who had lean’d all day
Over the bed from chime to chime,
Then rais’d herself for the first time,
And as she sat her down, did pray.
Her little work-table was spread
With work to finish. For the glare
Made by her candle, she had care
To work some distance from the bed.
Without, there was a cold moon up,
Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
The hollow halo it was in
Was like an icy crystal cup.
Through the small room, with subtle sound
Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
And redden’d. In its dim alcove
The mirror shed a clearness round.
I had been sitting up some nights,
And my tired mind felt weak and blank;
Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank
The stillness and the broken lights.
Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years
Heard in each hour, crept off; and then
The ruffled silence spread again,
Like water that a pebble stirs.
Our mother rose from where she sat;
Her needles, as she laid them down,
Met lightly, and her silken gown
Settled: no other noise than that.
“Glory unto the Newly Born!”
So, as said angels, she did say;
Because we were in Christmas Day,
Though it would still be long till morn.
Just then in the room over us
There was a pushing back of chairs,
As some who had sat unawares
So late, now heard the hour, and rose.
With anxious softly-stepping haste
Our mother went where Margaret lay,
Fearing the sounds o’erhead—should they
Have broken her long watch’d-for rest!
She stoop’d an instant, calm, and turn’d;
But suddenly turn’d back again;
And all her features seem’d in pain
With woe, and her eyes gaz’d and yearn’d.
For my part, I but hid my face,
And heald my breath, and spoke no word:
There was none spoken; but I heard
The silence for a little space.
Our mother bow’d herself and wept:
And both my arms fell, and I said,
“God knows I knew that she was dead.”
And there, all white, my sister slept.
Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn
A little after twelve o’clock
We said, ere the first quarter struck,
“Christ’s blessing on the newly born!”
We too shall Sleep
Archibald Lampman
Not, not for thee,
Belovèd child, the burning grasp of life
Shall bruise the tender soul. The noise, and strife,
And clamor of midday thou shalt not see;
But wrapped for ever in thy quiet grave,
Too little to have known the earthly lot,
Time’s clashing hosts above thine innocent head,
Wave upon wave,
Shall break, or pass as with an army’s tread,
And harm thee not.
A few short years
We of the living flesh and restless brain
Shall plumb the deeps of life and know the strain,
The fleeting gleams of joy, the fruitless tears;
And then at last when all is touched and trie,
Our own immutable night shall fall, and deep
In the same silent plot, O little friend,
Side by thy side,
In peace that changeth not, nor knoweth end,
We too shall sleep.
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