“The Pains of
Sleep”
by
Samuel Coleridge
THE PAINS OF SLEEP
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees ;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication ;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong !
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still !
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions ! maddening brawl !
And shame and terror over all !
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did :
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
So two nights passed : the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child ;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,--
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do !
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.
(1803)
http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Pains_of_Sleep.html
COMMENTARY
Author: Samuel Coleridge.
Poem: “The Pains of Sleep”
Year of publication: 1803
This poem seems on the surface to be about the thought
that the author had about his life, when he was not so young.
In the title of the poem “The pains of
sleep”, Samuel Coleridge refers to
suffering, the word that the author uses is “the pains” and
the reader by means of that could
predict something like what the poem is going to be about.
The author opens the poem in the first stanza
introducing the reader in an atmosphere of peace, of rest. For example when
Coleridge refers to: “the bed” (line 1) or “mine eye-lids
close” (line 6) but not only these words. In the second stanza Samuel
Coleridge is like he had a flash back in his life because the author thinks
about his past and he remembers things. For example when the author says:
“and whom I scorned…” the poem has a lot of actions in the
past. But Samuel Coleridge also speaks about maturity. Things that the man is
reflecting now, but when he was young those things did not matter. It is like a
regret or thought about the past. And finally in the third stanza the author
feels like a child and cries, but he thinks about the loneliness, and the
author wonders why he feels that sorrow, what he has done and he is homesick
for the company.
Samuel Coleridge tells us his thoughts and speaks
about that life with calm, thought and nostalgia. The meaning in the poem is
especially straightforward because there are not many words that confuse you to
know about what the poet is referring to. Some ambiguity could appear while you
are reading the poem and, firstly, you do not know if it is a dream or it is a
real situation.
The author dedicates the poem to suffering and accepts
the reality of life, which he is living.
For Samuel Coleridge, as we can see in the poem, and
for us, the suffering is a reality in our life, which sooner or later everybody
has to pass. You reach for different stages and you have to face up to good and
bad things. The author shows and transmits the pain to the reader.
The poem is about a person, and in this case, it seems
to be autobiographical. The event that the poem tells us would be what happened
to Coleridge. In the poem we could find some references about the author.
During all the poem the possessive pronoun “my” appears eight
times, the personal pronoun “I” appears fourteen times and six
times the pronoun “me”.
The tone of the poem is soft and wistful because in
all the poem the author is regretting and thinking about that real life that he
has. It seems that Coleridge gives us patience to read, thought about your
things or problems and thinks about what he is saying.
“The pains of sleep” is written in a three
stanza structure with a variable rhyme scheme, I mean, the rhythm is quite
irregular. In the first stanza it is AABBCCDEDEEFF, in the second it is
ABABCDCDDEEFFGHGHII and the third is AABBCCDDEEFGH. The first stanza is
thirteen lines long, the second nineteen and finally, the third is twenty lines
long.
Coleridge describes the feeling that he lives when he
thinks that his life will not be so long. I can see that the poem belongs to
Romanticism, because the theme of suffering is also important, although a bit
more difficult to detect. The poem is concentrated in the past, the things or
regrets in his life. Samuel Coleridge describes a situation that everybody
lives in their life. The poem is grounded in the real world.
From my point of view I think that in the poem there
is nothing confusing or complex to know that Samuel Coleridge is speaking about
a person who is ill and he is regretting the cause of why this problem comes to
him.
The poem gives you the idea that it treats about a
person that has a terminal illness and he is alone, he feels alone and, he has
fear to be alone. He does not want to fall asleep, he fears not to wake up and
he thought about what his life has been. When he has done good or bad things
and when he has been good and bad. And now after all that he has done, he only
wants company and thinks why he is like that, why the loneliness has to be with
him and not have to be with other people.
Samuel
Coleridge immerses the reader in the life of that person (or maybe his life)
and at the same time the poem makes me think about those times that I have done
something bad or good but it is not the end that I hope or wish.
I like the poem because I like, sometimes, to reflect
about things. And while I am reflecting I can not fall asleep because it is
like a fear that I do not want that to happen again.
by Merce Quiralte Moragues.
(18 November 2005)
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sources:
- The Pains of sleep.
mtiefert@mindspring.com. Last modified 5 November 1999. Visited 12 January
2006.
http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Pains_of_Sleep.html
Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Merce Quiralte Moragues
mamerqui@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press