To Sleep
To Sleep - form Summary
Sonnet Turn as Plea
Keats's "To Sleep" is an explicit sonnet that opens with an address praising Sleep as a comforting, embalming force. At the formal turn around line nine the tone shifts into an urgent petition: the speaker begs Sleep to seal away conscience, memory, and daytime worries. The sonnet’s compact structure focuses praise into a personal plea, reflecting Keats’s documented struggles with insomnia and anxious thought.
Read Complete AnalysesO 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 hoards Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
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