Explore "Bed" by Charles Dickens on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Oh, Sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole!"
Was the heart's cry of the Ancient Mariner at the recollection of the blessed moment when the fearful curse of life in death fell off him, and the heavenly sleep first "slid into his soul. " "Blessings on sleep! " said honest Sancho Panza: "it wraps one all around like a mantle! " -- a mantle for the weary human frame, lined softly, as with the down of the eider-duck, and redolent of the soothing odors of the poppy. The fabled cave of Sleep was in the land of Darkness. No ray of the sun, or moon, or stars, ever broke upon that night without a dawn. The breath of somniferous flowers floated in on the still air from the grotto's mouth. Black curtains hung round the ever-sleeping god; the Dreams stood around his couch; Silence kept watch at the portals. Take the winged Dreams from the picture, and what is left? The sleep of matter.