Poetry and Sleep
Sleep Rituals
To Say Before Going To Sleep
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
have someone to sit by and be with.
I would like to cradle you and softly sing,
be your companion while you sleep or wake.
I would like to be the only person
in the house who knew: the night outside was cold.
And would like to listen to you
and outside to the world and to the woods.
The clocks are striking, calling to eachother,
and one can see right to the edge of time.
Outside the house a strange man is afoot
and a strange dog barks, wakened from his sleep.
Beyond that there is silence.
My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move.
How to Sleep
Philip Larkin
Child in the womb,
Or saint on a tomb—
Which way shall I lie
To fall asleep?
The keen moon stares
From the back of the sky,
The clouds are all home
Like driven sheep.
Bright drops of time,
One and two chime,
I turn and lie straight
With folded hands;
Convent-child, Pope,
They choose this state,
And their minds are wiped calm
As sea-leveled sands.
So my thoughts are:
But sleep stays as far,
Till I crouch on one side
Like a foetus again—
For sleeping, like death,
Must be won without pride,
With a nod from nature,
With a lack of strain,
And a loss of stature.
In the Dark
A.A. Milne
I’ve had my supper,
And had my supper,
And HAD my supper and all;
I’ve heard the story
Of Cinderella,
And how she went to the ball;
I’ve cleaned my teeth,
And I’ve said my prayers,
And I’ve cleaned and said them right;
And they’ve all of them been
And kissed me lots,
They’ve all of them said “Good-night.”
So—here I am in the dark alone,
There’s nobody here to see;
I think to myself,
I play to myself,
And nobody knows what I say to myself;
Here I am in the dark alone,
What is it going to be?
I can think whatever I like to think,
I can play whatever I like to play,
I can laugh whatever I like to laugh,
There’s nobody here but me.
I’m talking to a rabbit…
I’m talking to the sun…
I think I am a hundred—
I’m one.
I’m lying in a forest…
I’m lying in a cave…
I’m talking to a Dragon…
I’m BRAVE.
I’m lying on my right…
I’m play a lot to-morrow…
……………………..
I’ll think a lot tomorrow…
……………………..
I’ll laugh…
…..
a lot……..
…..
tomorrow…..
(Heigh-ho!)
Good-night.
Morning Song
Sylvia Plath
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I’m no more your mother
Thank the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window suare
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Stone Pillow
Norman MacCaig
The malediction that each moment is
Falls from your lips—or what I dream is there.
I fight with an angel, and a Jacob stair
Shuts me from heaven with heavenly distances.
Why should such dreams mock me?—that mock you, too,
As any dream must do.
I need create no windy plain where gods
Might seem to insinuate themselves in what
Is matter for human lust and human thought
(My head to lie, a clod between two clods,
No doubt, while heroes briskly make a myth
To immortalize you with).
For all the Helens made golden by a word
Are your projection on the marvelous screen,
A different wonder, the always might-have-been.
You’re the dull fact, the mortally absurd
That gives sense to all Troys and makes them fall
Into the possible.
Immortal ordinariness—is that
A meaning you can have? Cuchulain, changed
Extraordinarily, but still Cuchulain, ranged
Tall ranks of enemies and laid them flat.
The battle done, he became like other men.
—Cuchulain once again?
Outward and inward equally in you
Display the other. Let no crisis be,
To loose you in depredation upon me;
How could I bear to be destroyed and through
My falling forces see you pass, no more
Immortal than before?
My dreams and angel-like because their praise
Fills the distance between us, measuring
A space and time with what they are. You’ll bring
Their heavenly ladder down when I can raise
My human head from this stone pillow and stare
At you and the desert there.
The Bedroom
George Bruce
Here her apple-green dream in high summer.
Cornucopia. Lawn curtains lifted and fell.
From her virgin bed, in ones, in spangles,
in to-fro runs mingling lights and shadows, water
mirrors itself on the ceiling, a shimmer
from the slipping river running by the green plot,
her garden below. Bird voices of children.
“I am on my swing and swing so high
that the bright sky brushes my eyes.”
And over the wall where the stream
is glass the swan placed to be seen.
Untouched by tomorrow or yesterday
tea will be served on the lawn
and afterwards, chocolate creams.
Good Night
Eleanor Farjeon
Now good-night.
Fold up your clothes
As you were taught,
Fold your two hands,
Fold up your thought;
Day is the plough-land,
Night is the stream,
Day is for doing
and night is for dream.
Now good-night.
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