William Ernest Henley.

    XXXIX.

    Oh, Sleep! it is a gentle thing
    Beloved from pole to pole! 
    To Mary Queen the praise be given! 
    She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
    That slid into my soul.

    Samuel T. Coleridge.

    XL.

    What is more gentle than a wind in summer? 
    What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
    That stays one moment in an open flower,
    And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower? 
    What is more tranquil than a musk rose blowing
    In a green island, far from all men’s knowing? 
    More healthful than the leanness of dales? 
    More secret than a nest of nightingales? 
    More serene than Cordelia’s countenance? 
    More full of visions than a high romance? 
    What, but thee Sleep?  Soft closer of our eyes! 
    Low murmurer of tender lullabies! 
    Light hoverer around our happy pillows! 
    Wreather of poppy buds and weeping willows! 
    Silent entangler of a beauty’s tresses! 
    Most happy listener! when the morning blesses
    Thee for enlivening all the cheerful eyes
    That glance so brightly at the new sun-rise.

    John Keats.

    XLI.

    My sleep had been embroidered with dim dreams,
    My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
    With flowers, and stirring shades of baffled beams.

    John Keats.

XLII.

Sleep is a blessed thing.  All my long life
I have known this, its value infinite
To man, its symbol of the perfect peace
That marks eternity, its marvellous
Relief from all the vanities and wounds,
The little battles and unrest of soul
That we call life. 
Sleep is a blessed thing,
Doubly it has been taught me.  All the time
I cannot have you, all the heart-sick days
Of utter yearning, of eternal ache
Of longing, longing for the sight of you,
Fade and dissolve at night and you are mine,
At least in dreams, at least in blessed dreams.

Leolyn Louise Everett.

    XLIII.

    Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
      In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay
    Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’d
      Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;
    Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day,
      Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain,
    Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
      Blended alike from sunshine and from rain,
      As though a rose could shut and be a bud again.

    John Keats.

    XLIV.

    O magic sleep!  O comfortable bird,
    That broodest o’er the troubled sea of the mind
    ’Till it is hush’d and smooth!  O unconfin’d
    Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key
    To golden palaces, strange