To Sleep
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 tonight away:
Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
It’s three o’clock and you can’t sleep. You’ve found the witching hour of the soul, when insomnia drags you into a torrent of impatience, exhaustion, incredulity and television.
(Liza Voronin/The Epoch Times)
What can you do? Time-honored cures do nothing, whether it’s a mug of warm milk, the reek of lavender, or a good long soak. You may even try that well-worn remedy of counting sheep. If so, you’d be in good company, for this is where Wordsworth begins in his sonnet.
“One after one,” he counts them, these beatific thought-sheep, yet they “leisurely” pass him by, as if disappearing into the dark that eludes him. So much for them!
Wordsworth’s tone is somewhere between exasperation and wry amusement.
Lullaby-like sweet airs, impressions and dreams come into his consciousness as he looks for that elusive key to rest. Is there anything more soothing than “the sound of rain” beyond our window, with the breath of night on the cool damp grass outside?
The murmuring hum of bees brings to mind Yeats’ future idyll in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” in which, standing “on the roadway and on the pavements gray” he imagines retiring to live “alone in the bee-loud glade”. Wordsworth conjures up an entire cosmos of “rivers, winds and seas,” but it’s all in vain.
Paradoxically, for us, these lines are deeply relaxing to read and to softly recite. In particular, the “white sheets of water” possess a limpid purity that shines with peace. The image of “the pure sky” leaves us to contemplate eternal space.
“Still I lie sleepless,” Wordsworth admits. His desire to find solace amid the splendor of creation turns into sublime sorrow. Attempting to “win” oblivion by stealth, Wordsworth portrays himself as a suitor rebuffed by a recalcitrant beauty. It’s third time unlucky.
How many of us can identify with Wordsworth’s description of lying awake until the birds twitter their dawn chorus, heralding another failed night. The “melancholy cry” of the cuckoo that he hears is symbolic of faithlessness, a broken home. Insomnia steals into our domestic nest and tears it to tatters.
Sleep is the “blessed barrier between the day and day,” a wall of protection rather than an obstacle. Sleep is sanctuary. Yet even as Wordsworth imagines repose, the heavy ‘b’ and ‘d’ sounds in the sentence are like a series of hammer blows falling on his brain.
Sleep is a “mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health.” Indeed, without our nightly ascent into unreason, our mind becomes dry and stale, our well-being suffers and joy vanishes. Poetry too, as a form of waking dream, is powerfully restorative.
Yet Wordsworth calls upon this muse-like presence only to recognize her desolating absence. The poem ends on a note of wistful hope and secular prayer, leaving us to wonder if it was it ever answered.
Literature, insomnia and a certain wide-eyed mania have always enjoyed a curious affinity. Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth contains one of the most famous descriptions of sleep as “the ravelled sleave of care” and the “balm of hurt minds,” as Macbeth babbles in guilty terror after stabbing King Duncan. He is tormented by the belief that he will never sleep again—blasted, like a ghost, into an eternal awareness of his sin.
F Scott Fitzgerald says pithily: “The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.” Sylvia Plath writes of an insomniac exiled from the living sleep of his neighbors, who set off to work “in rows, as if recently brainwashed”. And in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club, the narrator comments, “When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep and you’re never really awake.”
It is left to D H Lawrence, with his extraordinary lyrical tenderness, to evoke the healing reverie of the most ordinary rest: “And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower, then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.” Amen to that.
William Wordsworth (1770 –1850) revolutionized English literature with his poetry collection Lyrical Ballads, written in collaboration with his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
