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John Keats

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,
    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.

About the poet

John KeatsJohn Keats
1795-1821

 
By the same poet
On first looking into Chapman's Homer
The Realm of Fancy
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to Psyche
To Autumn
Ode on Melancholy
Fragment of an Ode to Maia
Bards of Passion and of Mirth
Stanzas
La Belle Dame sans Merci
When I have Fears that I may cease to be
Last Sonnet
 
Related books
John Keats at amazon.co.uk

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