Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

References to this poem

Sonnet to Sleep

  • O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
  • Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
  • Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d 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.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “Sonnet to Sleep.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.28 , University of Victoria, 24 September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_sonnet_to_sleep.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “Sonnet to Sleep,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_sonnet_to_sleep.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “Sonnet to Sleep.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.28 , last modified 24th September 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_sonnet_to_sleep.html.