Poets on Sleep

I've been thinking about sleep (especially insufficient sleep) and all the poets who have written about a desire for sleep. A number of poets have attempted to obtain sleep via bribing Sleep or Morpheus or someone associated with sleep. It's a really old poetic trope, one that goes back at least to Latin, but I always think of this particular bit of Chaucer's poem The Book of the Duchess (c. 1368–1372):

Chaucer The Book of the Duchess

I wolde yive thilke Morpheus,
Or his goddesse, dame Iuno,
Or som wight elles, I ne roghte who --
To make me slepe and have som reste --
I wil yive him the alder-beste
Yift that ever he aboode his lyve,
And here on warde, right now, as blyve;
If he wol make me slepe a lyte,
Of downe of pure dowves whyte
I wil yive him a fether-bed,
Rayed with golde, and right wel cled
In fyn blak satin doutremere,
And many a pilow, and every bere
Of clothe of Reynes, to slepe softe;
Him thar not nede to turnen ofte.
And I wol yive him al that falles
To a chambre; and al his halles
I wol do peynte with pure golde,
And tapite hem ful many folde
Of oo sute; this shal he have,
Yf I wiste wher were his cave,
If he can make me slepe sone,
As did the goddesse Alcione (ll. 242–64; c. 1370)

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This has one of my very favorite lines in Chaucer; this bit right here:

If he wol make me slepe a lyte,
Of downe of pure dowves whyte
I wil yive him a fether-bed,
Rayed with golde, and right wel cled
In fyn blak satin doutremere.

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I love the word doutremere; it's Middle English taken right from French “de outre mere,” or “from beyond the sea.”


Or in modern English:

If he will make me sleep a little,
Of down of pure white doves
I will give him a feather-bed
Arrayed with gold, and very well clad
In fine black satin from across-the-sea.

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This thing of bribing sleep gets picked up by later poets, too. You can see it in Elizabeth poet Philip Sidney's sonnet cycle Astrophil and Stella (1591).

Astrophil and Stella 39:

By Sir Philip Sidney

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

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The Elizabethan sonnet cycle poet Samuel Daniel (roughly a year after Sidney) uses the convention too, though he's less trying to bribe Sleep than summon sleep:

Delia 45
By Samuel Daniel

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:
Relieve my languish, and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my cares, return;
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventur’d youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night’s untruth.
Cease dreams, th’ imagery of our day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain;
And never wake to feel the day’s disdain (1592).

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Even Keats tries to summon Sleep in a sonnet.

To Sleep
By John Keats

O 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 lords
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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What's interesting is that though these all have a similar theme, though they're all sonnets, they are also all very different.

What makes each of these sonnets unique? What makes them different from the others?