Charles I, King of England.

XIV.

         Oh, Brahma, guard in sleep
    The merry lambs and the complacent kine,
    The flies below the leaves and the young mice
    In the tree roots, and all the sacred flocks
    Of red flamingo; and my love Vijaya,
    And may no restless fay, with fidget finger
    Trouble his sleeping; give him dreams of me.

William B Yeats.

    XV.

    Solemnly, mournfully,
      Dealing its dole,
    The Curfew Bell
      Is beginning to toll.

    Cover the embers,
      And put out the light;
    Toil comes with morning,
      And rest with the night.

    Dark grow the windows,
      And quenched is the fire;
    Sound fades into silence,—­
      All footsteps retire.

    No voice in the chambers,
      No sound in the hall! 
    Sleep and oblivion
      Reign over all!

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

    XVI.

    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

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

    XVII.

    Our life is twofold:  Sleep hath its own world,
    A boundary between the things mis-named
    Death and existence:  Sleep hath its own world,
    And a wide realm of wild reality. 
    And dreams in their development have breath,
    And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
    They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
    They take a weight from off our waking toils. 
    They do divide our being; they become
    A portion of ourselves as of our time,
    And look like heralds of eternity;—­

    Lord Byron.

    XVIII.

    O gentle Sleep!  Do they belong to thee,
    These twinklings of oblivion?  Thou dost love
    To sit in meekness, like the brooding Dove,
    A captive never wishing to be free.

    William Wordsworth.

    XIX.

    O soft embalmer of the still midnight! 
    Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
    Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
    Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
    O soothest Sleep! if so it pleases 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.