# To Sleep explained — Poetry

> Chapter companion for Poetry by John Keats.

## 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.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown

The speaker who addresses Sleep and seeks relief from conscience and memory.

## Key lines

> 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._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_14_se/chapters/to-sleep
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_14_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_14_se/chapters