Hokku 1
Where the flowers sleep,
Thank God ! I shall sleep, to-night.
Oh, come, butterfly !
Poems on the topic: sleep
Poems on the topic “sleep” on Poets.by.
Cradle Songs 1
Sleep, my love, your way of dream
By the fireflies shall be lighted,
That I gather from the heart of night.
Your father is off, good night,
To buy the honey from the stars :
The city of stars is away a hundred miles.
But by the dawn he will return,
Riding on the horses of the dews,
For you, with a drum as big as the sun
A Tree at Dusk
With secrets in their eyes the blue-winged Hours
Rustle through the meadow
Dropping shadow.
Yawning among red flowers,
The Moon Child with her golden hoop
And a pink star drifting after,
Leans to me where I droop.
I hear her delicate, soft laughter,
And through my hair her tiny fingers creep. . . .
I shall sleep.
Sandy Star: Exit
No, his exit by the gate
Will not leave the wind ajar;
He will go when it is late
With a misty star.
One will call, he cannot see;
One will call, he will not hear;
He will take no company
Nor a hope or fear.
We shall smile who loved him so--
They who gave him hate will weep;
But for us the winds will blow
Pulsing through his sleep.
The Sleeper
As Ann came in one summer's day,
She felt that she must creep,
So silent was the clear cool house,
It seemed a house of sleep.
And sure, when she pushed open the door,
Rapt in the stillness there,
Her mother sat, with stooping head,
Asleep upon a chair;
Fast--fast asleep; her two hands laid
Loose-folded on her knee,
So that her small unconscious face
Looked half unreal to be:
So calmly lit with sleep's pale light
Each feature was; so fair
Her forehead--every trouble was
Smooth'd out beneath her hair.
Sleep
Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.
Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.
The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.
Two worlds they have--a globe forgot
Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.
A Deep-Sworn Vow
Others because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.
A Visit
Westward the field of the cloth of gold.
It is fall — see the gold in the dust of the fields.
Lay the golden cloth upon me. It is night and I come
through the streets to your window.
The dust and the words are all gone, brushed away. Let
me sleep.
In the Night
Sleep, O my little ones, sleep.
Safe till the daylight be breaking . . .
We have long vigils to keep,
Harvests to sow while you sleep.
Fair for the hour of your waking,
Ripe for your sickles to reap.
Sleep, O my little ones, sleep.
Yours is the golden To-morrow,
Yours are the hands that will reap
Dreams that we sow while you sleep.
Fed with our hope and our sorrow,
Rich with the tears that we weep.
The Song for Colin
I sang a song at dusking time
Beneath the evening star,
And Terence left his latest rhyme
To answer from afar.
Pierrot laid down his lute to weep,
And sighed, "She sings for me."
But Colin slept a careless sleep
Beneath an apple tree.
"It Is Not a Word"
It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.
Not by the Sea
Not by the sea, but somewhere in the hills,
Not by the sea, but in the uplands surely
There must be rest where a dim pool demurely
Watches all night the stern slow-moving skies;
Not by the sea, that never was appeased,
Not by the sea, whose immemorial longing
Shames the tired earth where even longing dies,
Not by the sea that bore Iseult and Helen,
But in a dark green hollow of the hills
There must be sleep, even for sleepless eyes.
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