To sleep
John Keats (1795-1821)
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 it so 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 passéd 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 oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.
Al sueño
Suave embalsamador de la alta noche en calma,
que cierras con benignos y cuidadosos dedos
nuestros ojos que gustan de ocultarse a la luz,
envueltos en la sombra de un celestial olvido;
oh dulcísimo sueño, si así te place, cierra,
en medio de tu canto, mis ojos deseantes,
o espera el 'Así sea', hasta que tu amapola
eche sobre mi cama los dones de tu arrullo.
Líbrame, pues, o el día que se fue volverá
a alumbrar mi almohada, engendrando aflicciones;
de la conciencia líbrame, que impone, inquisitiva,
su voluntad en lo oscuro, hurgando como un topo;
gira bien, con la llave, los cierres engrasados,
y sella así la urna callada de mi espíritu.
Nicanor Guerra, a
professor of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, has translated this
poem into Spanish.
STRUCTURE:
It is a sonnet, a variant of the English sonnet. Keats, as a Romantic, tried to experiment with the form of the sonnets. It is composed by fourteen verses made up of two quartets and two trios with this rhyme structure: ababcdcd bc fgfg. There is true rhyme in some of the verses: midnightàlight, shineà divine, closeà throwsà hoardsà wards, moleà sole. Each line has ten syllables.
In the poem we find the use of the first personal pronoun. So, we realize the author is the main character of the poem. “My willing eyes”, “Save me”, “my Soul”. We also find the use of the second pronoun, which indicates the presence of the addressee along the poem: “thee”, “thy poppy throws”.
In “close in midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes” and “Or wait the "Amen," he is like invoking death, until he will be blessed” through this, we realize that the author of the poem has a religious ideology.
In the last three verses, the author emphasizes his wishes. Here the author is showing us his feelings, he knows that in this world everything is bad for him, he can’t do nothing to improve his style of life and the last option that he has is to leave what he wants.
INTERPRETATION:
We can interpret the meaning of the title of the poem like a metaphor it really means “die”. Keats interprets dying is like to fall asleep, a state of unconsciousness. We3 also can interpret “to sleep” as one of the best pleasures that a man can have in this world, because when you are sleeping your mind is free, you are not worried about what it is happening around you.
In the first five verses Keats is showing us the death with kind and mild adjectives (soft, careful, benign, pleased, divine, smoothest, embalme), in a positive way to express his feelings. “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 smoothest Sleep!”.
He wants “The Sleep” to fall asleep (=to die), he doesn't mind when because of his suffering: while he would sleep (“ In midst of this thine hymn”), or after the priest's absolution (“Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws”).
After that, he explains why: “Then save me, or the passed day will shine/ upon my pillow, breeding many woes;/ Save me from curious conscience that still hoards/ Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;/ Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,/ And seal the hushed casket of my soul.”. The key word is SAVE because the author repeats the word twice; he needs to be saved of the life. So, the poet is looking for the death as a liberation. Life is like a jail for him.
The reason why Keats repeats “save me” is because he thoughts that there’s life before death with no more problems, so he wants to go there now.
“Upon my pillow, breeding many woes” shows us that he is seriously ill; he knows that his end is coming soon and he don’t want to suffer more.
PERSONAL OPINION:
In my opinion the author seems to be irritated, weak because he depends on the will of God. God is who decides when it’s your time to leave the world. There is a melancholic tone. There are contradictions between sadness, which is one of the feelings which invades the author’s heart but on the other hand, we find happiness, a feeling of wisdom that can be interpreted through all the invocations; and between light and darkness as a positive element and the light as a negative one (not very common).
So there are two possible interpretations of the poem: the fantastic one were when you are dreaming you are safe and you can do whatever you want without thinking if it is good or bad, or the negative one were you are going to die but you don’t know when and meanwhile you are suffering what it is not written waiting for the miracle. Personally I prefer the first interpretation perhaps because I’m a romantic person.