With shield of proof shield' me from out the prease SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. SLEEP. FROM SLEEP. Of all the thoughts of God that are What would we give to our beloved ? SECOND PART OF HENRY IV." poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep!-() sleep! 0 sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted : That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cr l'pon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hushed with buzzing night-flies slumber, Than in the perfumed chambers of the gre Under the canopies of costly state, And lulled with sounds of sweetest melod O thou dull god! why liest thou with the In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell ? Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his In cradle of the rude imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hangin With deafening clamors in the slippery cl That, with the hurly, death itself awakes Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy rep To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude ; And in the calmest and most stillest nigh With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. What do we give to our beloved ? A little faith, all undisproved, A little dust, to overweep, And bitter memories, to make The whole earth blasted for our sake, “He giveth his beloved sleep." “Sleep soft, beloved !" we sometimes say, But have no tune to charm away Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep ; But never doleful dreain again Shall break the happy slumber when “He giveth his beloved sleep." O earth, so full of dreary noise ! For me, my heart, hat erst did go Most like a tired child at a show, Can snore upon the flint, when restive alo Finds the down pillow hard. How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon, With lips of lurid blue ; The other, rosy as the morn When, throned on ocean's wave, It blushes o'er the world : Yet both so passing wonderful ! SLEEPLESSNESS. A FLOCK of sheep that leisurely pass by One after one ; the sound of rain, and bees Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky; I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie Sleepless ; and soon the small birds' melodies Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees, And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay, And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth : So do not let me wear to-night away : Without thee what is all the morning's wealth ? Come, blesséd barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health ! WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Hath then the gloomy Power Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres Seized on her sinless soul ? Must then that peerless form Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow, That lovely outline which is fair As breathing marble, perish ? Must putrefaction's breath But loathsomeness and ruin ? Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, On which the lightest heart might moralize? Or is it only a sweet slumber Stealing o'er sensation, Chaseth into darkness ? Will lanthe wake again, CARILLON. In the ancient town of Bruges, Yes! she will wake again, Although her glowing limbs are motionless, And silent those sweet lips, Once breathing eloquence Her dewy eyes are closed, On the earth and in the air, THE DREAM OF CLARENCE. FROM "RICHARD 11." CLARENCE. O, I have passed a miserable night! For a moment woke the echoes So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, Of the ancient town of Bruges. That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, But amid my broken slumbers Though 't were to buy a world of happy days, Still I heard those magic numbers, So full of dismal terror was the time! As they loud proclaimed the flight Methought that I had broken from the Tower, And stole marches of the night; And was embarked to cross to Burgundy, Till their chimes in sweet collision And, in my company, my brother Gloster, Mingled with each wandering vision, | Who from my cabin tempted me to walk, Mingled with the fortune-telling Upon the hatches; thence we looked toward Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies, England, Which amid the waste expanses And cited up a thousand heavy times, Of the silent land of trances During the wars of York and Lancaster, Have their solitary dwelling ; That had befallen us. As we paced along All else seemed asleep in Bruges, Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, In the quaint old Flemish city. Methought that Gloster stumbled ; and, in fall ing, And I thought how like these chimes Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard, Are the poet's airy rhymes, Into the tumbling billows of the main. All his rhymes and roundelays, O Lord ! methought what pain it was to drown! His conceits, and songs, and ditties, What dreadful noise of water in mine ears ! From the belfry of his brain, What sights of ugly death within mine eyes! Scattered downward, though in vain, Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks ; On the roofs and stones of cities! A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; For by night the drowsy ear Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Under its curtains cannot hear, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, And by day men go their ways, All scattered in the bottom of the sea : Hearing the music as they pass, Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes But deeming it no more, alas! Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept Than the hollow sound of brass. |(As 't were in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems, That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, Yet perchance a sleepless wight, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. Lodging at some humble inn BRAKENBURY. Had you such leisure, in the In the narrow lanes of life, time of death, When the dusk and hush of night To gaze upon these secrets of the deep? Shut out the incessant din CLAR. Methought I had ; and often did I strive Of daylight and its toil and strife, To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood May listen with a calm delight Stopt in my soul, and would not let it forth To the poet's melodies, To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air; Till he hears, or dreams he hears, But smothered it within my panting bulk, Intermingled with the song, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. Thoughts that he has cherished long; BRAK. Awaked you not with this sore agony ! Hears amid the chime and singing CLAR. No, no, my dream was lengthened after The bells of his own village ringing, life; And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes 10, then began the tempest to my soul ! Wet with most delicious tears. I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim fetryman which poets write of, Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé, The first that there did greet my stranger soul Listening with a wild delight Was my great father-in-law, renownéd Warwick; To the chimes that, through the night, Who cried aloud, “What scourge for perjury Rang their changes from the Belfry Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence ?" Of that quaint old Flemish city. And so he vanished : then came wandering by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. | A shadow like an angel, with bright hair SHAKESPEARE. I. Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud, Not by the sport of nature, but of man : “Clarence is come, — false, fleeting, perjured These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Clarence, Gazing, the one on all that was beneath That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury ; - Fair as herself, -- but the boy gazed on her; Seize on him, Furies ! take him to your torments !" | And both were young, and one was beautiful . With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends And both were young, — yet not alike in youth. Environed me, and howléd in mine ears As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, And that was shining on him ; he had looked She was his voice ; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words ; she was his siglit, Which colored all his objects; – he had ceased Our life is twofold ; sleep hath its own world, To live within himself : she was his life, Which terminated all ; upon a tone, A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And dreams in their development have breath, And his cheek change tempestuously,-- his heart And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy ; Unknowing of its cause of agony. They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, But she in these fond feelings had no share : They take a weight from off waking toils, Her sighs were not for him ; to her he was They do divide our being; they become Even as a brother, — but no more ; 't was much, A portion of ourselves as of our time, For brotherless she was, save in the name And look like heralds of eternity; Her infant friendship had bestowed on him ; They pass like spirits of the past, — they speak Herself the solitary scion left Like sibyls of the future; they have power, Of a time-honored race. It was a name The tyranny of pleasure and of pain ; Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not, They make us what we were not, - what they and why? will, Time taught him a deep answer — when she loved And shake us with the vision that's gone by, Another; even now she loved another, The dread of vanished shadows. — Are they so ? And on the summit of that hill she stood Is not the past all shadow! What are they? Looking afar if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew. A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. I would recall a vision which I dreamed There was an ancient mansion, and before Its walls there was a steed caparisoned ; The boy of whom I spake ; – he was alone, He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced I saw two beings in the hues of youth Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 't Green and of a mild declivity, the last As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such, With a convulsion, then rose again, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear But a most living landscape, and the wave What he had written, but he shed no tears, Of woods and cornfielels, and the abodes of men And he did calm himself, and fix his brow Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke Into a kind of quiet ; as he patised, Arising from such rustic roofs ; the hill The lady of his love re-entered there ; Was crowned with a peculiar diadem She was serene and smiling then, and yet Of trees, in circular array, so fixed, She knew she was by him beloved ; she knew Ill. II. were VI. IV. VII. For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw The wanderer was returned. I saw him sta That he was wretched, but she saw not all. Before an altar — with a genile bride ; He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp Her face was fair, but was not that which mi He took her hand ; a moment o'er his face The starlight of his boyhood ; - as he swud A tablet of unutterable thoughts Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps That in the antique oratory shook Pietired, but not as bidding her adieu, His bosom in its solitude ; and then for they did part with mutual smiles ; he passed As in that hour -- a moment o'er his face From out the massy gate of that old Hall. The tablet of unutterable thoughts And mounting on his steed he went his way; Was traced, — and then it faded as it came, And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more. And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own wo And all things reeled around him ; he could A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Not that which was, nor that which should The boy was sprung to manhood ; in the wilds been, Of fiery climes he made himself a home, But the old mansion, and the accustomed h And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt | And the remembered chambers, and the pla With strange and dusky aspects; he was not The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the st! Himself like what he had been ; on the sea All things pertaining to that place and hour And on the shore he was a wanderer ; And her who was his destiny, came back There was a mass of many images And thrust themselves between him and the li Crowded like waves upon me, but he was What business had they there at such a tim A part of all ; and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side The lady of his love ; -0, she was changel Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds As by the sickness of the soul ! her mind Were fastened near a fountain ; and a man, Had wandered from its dwelling, and her ey Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while, They had not their own lustre, but the look While many of his tribe slumbered around : Which is not of the earth ; she was become And they were canopied by the blue sky, The queen of a fantastic realın ; her though So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, Were combinations of disjointed things ; That God alone was to be seen in heaven. And forms impalpable and unperceived And this the world calls frenzy ; but the wi A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Have a far deeper madness, and the glance The lady of his love was wed with one Of melancholy is a fearful gift ; Who did not love her better : in her home, What is it but the telescope of truth? Making the cold reality too real ! A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Like to the Pontiac monarch of old days, Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, He fed on poisons, and they had no power, Nor could he be a part of that which preyed But were a kind of nutriment; he lived Upon her mind a spectre of the past. Through that which had been death to many V. VIII. |