To Sleep

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 soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,	5
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 passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;	10
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

As promised, I will often be subjecting my blog readers to the writings of John Keats, because I love him.

This ode, To Sleep is one that I've enjoyed for a long time.  I memorized it in Gr.12 and used to say it to myself before I closed my eyes for the night.  The SAYing is very important.  I didn't just think about it in my head.  The thing is, this poem, like many of Keats' works, sounds brilliant on the tongue.

"O soft..." With just two words, and not even two FULL words, Keats slows the pace of the day right down, and introduces the alliterative "s" sound that will run throughout the ode.  In the second line, Keats personifies Sleep, giving it "careful fingers" that will gently close our "willing eyes".

And I find it adorable that the speaker is then like "Hey, Sleep, buddy, if you want to put me out while I'm reciting this poem, that's totally cool with me." Or then there's the alternative, waiting til the poem's close, and passing out through some imaginative, abstract opium.

There's this lovely sentiment presented in Keats' poem of sleep as a beautiful escape. A "divine forgetfulness".  I also love the speaker's plea to be "saved" by sleep, because otherwise he will go over the details of the day, and worry and wonder about the future.  And its so simple and so true! Or it is for me anyways.  I'm often kept up by worries and to-do-lists, but sleep offers a wonderful pause button, where all of those worries go away.  

Now the final two lines are my absolutely favourite.  Say them out loud.  Its absolutely glorious.  The word "hush" is one of those words that actually sounds like what it means, and because of that its super super effective in poetry.  Keats is a master of full circles, the words "embalmer" and "casket" creating this understated aura of death, which you can really never escape in his poetry.  I choose not to dwell on that though, and rather soak in the beautiful alliteration and the naturally changing tempo.  Note the "hymn" bit too, because you can also rarely get through a Keats poem without some reference to music.

Which is another reason why I love him.


Goodnight lovelies!