Food for Thought

To Sleep

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 it so please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn,
my willing eyes,
Or wait the Amen, ere thy hoppy 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 the curious consience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, bun-owing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
John Keats: 1795-1824