To Sleep
To Sleep - meaning Summary
Comfort Turned Grievance
The speaker addresses Sleep directly, acknowledging traditional praise for its comfort, healing, and mercy, yet expresses sharp personal grievance. While Sleep is celebrated as restorative and saintly, the poet labels it a tyrant: capricious, withholding its benefits, and arriving last when most needed. The poem registers a conflicted view—simultaneously admiring Sleep’s consolations and condemning its stubborn, unkind absence in times of suffering.
Read Complete AnalysesFOND words have oft been spoken to thee, Sleep! And thou hast had thy store of tenderest names; The very sweetest, Fancy culls or frames, When thankfulness of heart is strong and deep! Dear Bosom-child we call thee, that dost steep In rich reward all suffering; Balm that tames All anguish; Saint that evil thoughts and aims Takest away, and into souls dost creep, Like to a breeze from heaven. Shall I alone, I surely not a man ungently made, Call thee worst Tyrant by which Flesh is crost? Perverse, self-willed to own and to disown, Mere slave of them who never for thee prayed, Still last to come where thou art wanted most!
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