Sleep, that knits up the ravelld sleeve of care, The death of each days life, sore labours bath, Balm of hurt minds, great Natures second course, Chief nourisher in lifes feast. Shakespeare.Macbeth, Act II. Scene 2. (To his Lady after the murder.)
Tired Natures sweet restorer, balmy sleep! He, like the world, his ready visit pays Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes; . . . . . flies from woe, And lights on lids unsullied with a tear. Dr. Young.Night I. Line 1.
Sleep, thou repose of all things; Sleep, thou gentlest of the deities; thou peace of the mind, from which care flies; who dost soothe the hearts of men wearied with the toils of the day, and refittest them for labour. Ovid.Meta. Book XI. Line 623. (Rileys Transl.)
O Sleep, O gentle sleep! Natures soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Shakespeare.King Henry IV., Part II. Act III. Scene 1. (The King, solus.)
And I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. Shakespeare.Midsummer Nights Dream, Act IV. Scene 1. (Bottom to Titania.)
Sweet sleep fell upon his eyelids, unwakeful, most pleasant, the nearest like death. Homer.The Odyssey, Buckleys Transl., 177. Spenser.The Faërie Queen, Book II. Canto VII. Stanza 25.
They who make the least of death, consider it as having a great resemblance to sleep. Cicero.Tusculan Disputations, Book I. Div. 38. (Yonges Transl.)
And weeping then she made her moan, The night comes on that knows not morn, When I shall cease to be all alone, To live forgotten and love forlorn. Tennyson.Mariana in the South, last Verse.
Well, sleep thy fill, and take thy soft reposes; But know, withal, sweet tastes have sour closes; And he repents in thorns that sleeps in beds of roses. Quarles.Book I. No. VII. Stanza 3.
Is there aught in sleep can charm the wise? To lie in dead oblivion, losing half The fleeting moments of too short a life; Who would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than Nature craves. Thomson.Summer.