Sleep by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A speaker exhausted by toil, care, and anguish asks the winds and personified Sleep to quiet restless thoughts and relieve pain, recalling Hermes lulling Argus. The closing lines compare sleep and death to lesser and greater mysteries.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Genre: Sonnet, Lyric Poetry, Meditative Poetry · 158 words
First lines
Lull me to sleep, ye winds, whose fitful sound / Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught; / Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought / As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound / The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound; / For I am weary, and am overwrought / With too much toil, with too much care distraught, / And with the iron crown of anguish crowned. / Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek, / O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released / I breathe again uninterrupted breath! / Ah, with what subtile meaning did the Greek / Call thee the lesser mystery at the feast / Whereof the greater mystery is death!
Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen lines follow an ABBAABBA CDECDE rhyme scheme, moving from an appeal for rest to a comparison of sleep and death.
- Lyric Poetry — The speaker directly expresses weariness and anguish while addressing the winds and personified Sleep.
- Meditative Poetry — The plea for relief from restless thought ends in reflection on the relationship between sleep and death.
Tags
restless thoughts · exhaustion · anguish · death · Greek mythology
What this Textopian page supports
Sleep is listed on Textopian as a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Lyric Poetry, Meditative Poetry
- Length: 158 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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