Tuesday poem: To Sleep by John Keats
September 24, 2013
O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
Rhyming soul and mole is a brave thing, isn’t it? And sorry for using that photo again so soon, but it seems appropriate to one caught up in the exhausting world of editing! Click this link, dropped from a kakapo feather doona, and see if other poets have been thinking about dozing:
PS Cottier 
Soul and mole? Perhaps bravest if uttered by Kylie Mole in an ode to sweet slumbers rich in gum-twiddling expression.
Geoff, I’m sure she would call it chewie, not gum…That’s back in the days when chips were chips, not fries.
I somehow didn’t make the leap from Keats to Kyle Mole!