There are many times in our busy lives we have all prayed
for sleep to overtake our heavy lids and pass us into the world of the sandman
where dreams abound and time loses meaning. These restful states allow us to
reset from the day to day grind we experience, and REM sleep organizes out
thoughts so our brains can handle the next onslaught of screaming children,
memos, and traffic jams. Yet there are times where life is too much and sleep
simply is not enough. On the surface, the John Keats sonnet appears to be a man
pleading for a restful night wrapped in the blanket of morbid words. However,
his morbid words are no mood setting imagery, but in fact true pleas for the
calls of the true sleep which one can not return from due to the pains of
addiction.
Keats shows the reader of his intentions with the first
line, calling upon the soft embalmer of the still midnight. Just by using the
term “embalmer,” a tone has been set of morbidity and mortality that he wishes
to meet. He goes on to paint a picture of death overtaking him as he states,
“Shutting with careful fingers and benign/ Our gloom-ples’d eyes, emboer’d from
the light.” Keats continues on with “Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:/ O
soothest Sleep! If so it please thee, close,/ In midst of this thine hymn, my
willing eyes,” The use of the word divine is a play on words, as death is not
only a welcome joy but a G-d send. This idea is further cemented in “Sleep”
being capitalized in the next line and as he continues to plead with his angel
of death as if it is a divine being or G-d himself. The sonnet continues on to
state “Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws/ Around my bed its lulling
charities.” At the time of the sonnet, Opium was in common use for both
recreation as well as medicinal purposes. However, side effects of its use
included depression, anxiety as well as sleep deprivation. Though the high
gained from the addiction may be soothing, the effects are only exasperating
his condition which could also mean this line is used with quite a bit of
sarcasm. The poet continues to beg for fear of the next day’s light, and ends
with “Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards/ Its strength for
darkness, burrowing like the mole;/ Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,/
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.” He pleads again to be released from his
pain that is now eating away at his soul. The “curious conscience” that
blackens him so is in fact his addiction that is slowly taking him away,
burrowing deeper and deeper within him as glazed sleepless eyes look out
calling for relief. The author ends with
a casket as do all physical human forms. At the last line the reader can almost
hear a held in sigh as hopes are held high that a prayer will be answered.
Anyone who has suffered from waking pains with no rest can
attest to praying for sleep. Still, there are times in which the pain of life
bores into your soul and the only relief one can feel is the sweet release that
only death can bring. At these times, only a true ode to lasting sleep will do.
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