Sleep is a mysterious realm that invites us to escape into dreams and tranquility.
Find the right words to convey how much you love those restful nights through this collection of poems.
Here are 10 hypnotic poems about sleep that not only soothe your mind but also guide you into a peaceful state of rest.
Let’s jump right in!
My favorite poem about sleep
#1 “The Maze of Sleep” by Clark Ashton Smith
Sleep is a pathless labyrinth,
Dark to the gaze of moons and suns,
Through which the colored clue of dreams,
A gossamer thread, obscurely runs.
9 more poems about sleep
#2 “Sleep Is Supposed To Be,” by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Sleep is supposed to be,
By souls of sanity,
The shutting of the eye.
Sleep is the station grand
Down which on either hand
The hosts of witness stand!
Morn is supposed to be,
By people of degree,
The breaking of the day.
Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity;
One with the banner gay,
One in the red array, —
That is the break of day.
#3 “Love and Sleep” by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lilys leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said
I wist not what, saving one word Delight.
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my souls desire.
#4 “Sleep” by John Wolcot
Come, gentle sleep! attend thy votary’s prayer,
And, though death’s image, to my couch repair;
How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie,
And, without dying, O how sweet to die!
#5 “Invocation to Sleep” by John Fletcher
Come, Sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving
Lock me in delight awhile;
Let some pleasing dreams beguile
All my fancies, that from thence
I may feel an influence,
All my powers of care bereaving!
Though but a shadow, but a sliding,
Let me know some little joy!
We that suffer long annoy
Are contented with a thought,
Through an idle fancy wrought:
O, let my joys have some abiding!
#6 “Only In Sleep” by Sara Teasdale
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten,
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild,
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child?
#7 “Sleep, Angry Beauty, Sleep” by Thomas Campion
Sleep, angry beauty, sleep, and fear not me!
For who a sleeping lion dares provoke?
It shall suffice me here to sit and see
Those lips shut up that never kindly spoke:
What sight can more content a lover’s mind
Than beauty seeming harmless, if not kind?
My words have charmed her, for secure she sleeps,
Though guilty much of wrong done to my love;
And in her slumber, see! she close-eyed weeps:
Dreams often more than waking passions move.
Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee,
That she in peace may wake and pity me.
#8 “Sleeping” by Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
A long, long sleep, a famous sleep
That makes no show for dawn
By stretch of limb or stir of lid, —
An independent one.
Was ever idleness like this?
Within a hut of stone
To bask the centuries away
Nor once look up for noon?
#9 “Desire” by Paul Cameron Brown
Sleep is a striking woman
accosted by various men
while in a dance;
the warring desires thus
present themselves as on
a battlefield –
hunger comes arrayed with
red plumes to befit
his appetites,
sensuality somewhat
decked out as a dandy
in a mauve waistcoat
and, of course, there is
Fear, the most thwarted
of the suitors, bejewelled with a
flashing sabre, rattling it from
the tail of his skinny stick horse,
the pale charger riding
to intercept the beautiful courtesan Sleep
bestowing her favours illicitly
wherein she would but choose.
#10 From “Evening Hymn” by Sir Thomas Browne
Sleep is a death; O make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die!
And as gently lay my head
On my grave as now my bed.
Howe’er I rest, Great God, let me
Awake again at last with Thee;
And thus assured, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die.