Poetry · Chapter
To Sleep explained
The speaker pleads with Sleep, personified as a gentle embalmer, to close their eyes and grant forgetfulness from the troubles of the past day.
What happens
The speaker pleads with Sleep, personified as a gentle embalmer, to close their eyes and grant forgetfulness from the troubles of the past day. They ask to be saved from the prying conscience that burrows like a mole in the darkness, and to have their soul sealed away in peaceful oblivion.
Themes in this chapter
Sorrow and Melancholy
The poem is a plea for escape from the 'woes' and 'curious conscience' that haunt the speaker, reflecting deep melancholy.
Dreams and Escape
Sleep is invoked as a means of forgetfulness and release from the burdens of the waking world, embodying the desire for escape.
Characters to notice
- Unknown
The speaker who addresses Sleep and seeks relief from conscience and memory.
Key passages
“O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine”
O gentle Sleep, who soothes the quiet night, gently closing our sad eyes and hiding us from the light in a blessed state of forgetting.
Sleep is personified as a tender caretaker who brings oblivion.
“Save me from curious conscience, that still lords Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole”
Protect me from my prying conscience, which gathers its power in the dark, digging into my thoughts like a mole.
Conscience is depicted as a persistent, underground force that torments the speaker.
“Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul”
Gently lock the well-oiled mechanism and close the quiet container of my soul.
The soul is imagined as a locked casket, and Sleep is asked to seal it shut for peace.