With shield of proof shield'me from out the prease That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw; Would now its wearied vision close,
O, make in me those civil wars to cease :

Would childlike on His love repose
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Who "giveth his beloved sleep." Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed ;

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light;
A rosy garland, and a weary head.
And if these things, as being thine by right,

SLEEP.
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me
Livelier than elsewhere Stella's image see. I

FROM "SECOND PART OF HENRY Iv."
Sir PHILIP SIDNEY.

KING HENRY. How many thousand of my

poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep!-0 sleep! O gentle SLEEP.

sleep!

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, Of all the thoughts of God that are

| That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, Borne inward unto souls afar,

And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Among the Psalmist's music deep,

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Now tell me if that any is

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, For gift or grace surpassing this,

And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy “He giveth his beloved sleep"?

slumber,

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, What would we give to our beloved ?

Under the canopies of costly state, The hero's heart, to be unmoved,

And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody! The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep,

| 0 thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile, The patriot's voice, to teach and rouse,

In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly conch, The monarch's crown, to light the brows?

A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell! “He giveth his beloved sleep."

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast What do we give to our beloved ?

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains A little faith, all undisproved, —

In cradle of the rude imperious surge, A little dust, to overweep, —

And in the visitation of the winds, And bitter memories, to make

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them The whole earth blasted for our sake,

With deafening clamors in the slippery clouds, “He giveth his beloved sleep."

That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ? “Sleep soft, beloved !" we sometimes say,

Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose But have no tune to charm away

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude ; Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;

And in the calmest and most stillest night, But never doleful dreain again

With all appliances and means to boot, Shall break the happy slumber when

Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down, “He giveth his beloved sleep."

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. O earth, so full of dreary noise !

FROM "FIRST PART OF HENRY IV." O men, with wailing in your voice !

GLENDOWER. She bids you on the wanton O delvéd gold the wailers heap !

rushes lay you down, O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall !

And rest your gentle head upon her lap, God strikes a silence through you all,

And she will sing the song that pleaseth yon, And "giveth his beloved sleep."

And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,

Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness ; His dews drop mutely on the hill,

Making such difference betwixt wake and sleep, His cloud above it saileth still,

As is the difference betwixt day and night, Though on its slope men sow and reap; The hour before the heavenly-harnessed team More softly than the dew is shed,

Begins his golden progress in the east. Or cloud is floated overhead, “He giveth his beloved sleep."

FROM "CYMBELINE."

Weariness For me, my heart, that erst did go

Can snore upon the flint, when restive sloth Most like a tired child at a show,

| Finds the down pillow hard.

On the earth and in the air,

THE DREAM OF CLARENCE.
Save that footsteps here and there

FROM "RICHARD 11."
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,

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

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,
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
I trembling waked, and, for a season after, The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Could not believe but that I was in hell, – Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
Such terrible impression made my dream. There was but one belovéd face on earth,

SHAKESPEARE. And that was shining on him ; he had looked

Upon it till it could not pass away ;

He had no breath, no being, but in hers;
THE DREAM.

She was his voice ; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words ; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,

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,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence : sleep hath its own world,

The ocean to the river of his thoughts,

Which terminated all ; upon a tone, And a wide realm of wild reality,

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
Creations of the mind ? — The mind can make

Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give

II.
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.

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 Perchance in sleep, — for in itself a thought,

Its walls there was a steed caparisoned ; A slumbering thought, is capable of years,

Within an antique oratory stood
And curdles a long life into one hour.

The boy of whom I spake ; -- he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro : anon

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

were 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 cornfields, 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 paused, 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

ot

v.

For quickly comes such knowledge, that his

VI. heart

A change came c'er the spirit of my dream. Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw

The wanderer was returned. - I saw him stand 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 made He took her hand ; a moment o'er his face

The starlight of his boyhood ;-as he stood 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
Pjetired, 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 words,

And all things reeled around him ; he could see A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. Not that which was, nor that which should have 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 hall, And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt And the remembered chambers, and the place, With strange and dusky aspects ; he was not The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, 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 light; Crowded like waves upon me, but he was What business had they there at such a time! A part of all ; and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness,

. VII. 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 changed, 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 eyes, 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 realm ; her thoughts 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
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.

And this the world calls frenzy ; but the wise 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?
A thousand leagues from his, — her native home, Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy,

And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Daughters and sons of beauty, — but behold! Making the cold reality too real !
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,

VIII.
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. As if its lid were charged with unshed tears. The wanderer was alone as heretofore, What could her grief be ? — she had all she loved, The beings which surrounded him were gone, And he who had so loved her was not there Or were at war with him; he was a mark To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,

For blight and desolation, compassed round Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts. With hatred and contention ; pain was mixed What could her grief be ? — she had loved him In all which was served up to him, until, not,

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 tomany men,