Come to Me, Gentle Sleep!
Come to me, gentle Sleep!I pine, I pine for thee;Come with thy spells, the soft, the deep,And set my spirit free!Each lonely, burning thoughtIn twilight languor steep--Come to the full heart, long o’erwrought,O gentle, gentle Sleep!
Come with thine urn of dew,Sleep, gentle Sleep! yet bringNo voice, love’s yearning to renew,No vision on thy wing!Come, as to folding flowers,To birds in forests deep--Long, dark, and dreamless be thine hours,O gentle, gentle Sleep!
Intended Dedication of the “Scenes and Hymns of Life,” to WilliamWordsworth, Esq.
‘The fretful stirUnprofitable, and the fever of the worldHave hung upon the beatings of my heart;’
Words in this poem
- dreamless a.
- Free from, or without, dreams. Camden.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Come to Me, Gentle Sleep! is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Felicia Hemans, Project Gutenberg ebook #66785; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Felicia Hemans, Come to Me, Gentle Sleep!, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/come-to-me-gentle-sleep.html, id L19711.
Form and metre
Come to Me, Gentle Sleep! is 21 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABCACA sleepA · theeB · deepA · freeB · thoughtC · steepA · o'erwroughtC · sleepA
- 2 ABABCDCD dewA · bringB · renewA · wingB · flowersC · deepD · hoursC · sleepD
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Come to me, gentle Sleep! | 6 | ···/˘· |
| I pine, I pine for thee; | 6 | ······ |
| Come with thy spells, the soft, the deep, | 8 | ········ |
| And set my spirit free! | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Each lonely, burning thought | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| In twilight languor steep-- | 6 | ·/·/˘· |
| Come to the full heart, long o’erwrought, | 8 | ········ |
| O gentle, gentle Sleep! | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Come with thine urn of dew, | 6 | ······ |
| Sleep, gentle Sleep! yet bring | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| No voice, love’s yearning to renew, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| No vision on thy wing! | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Come, as to folding flowers, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| To birds in forests deep-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Long, dark, and dreamless be thine hours, | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| O gentle, gentle Sleep! | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Intended Dedication of the “Scenes and Hymns of Life,” to William | 17 | ˘/˘·˘/˘········/˘ |
| Wordsworth, Esq. | 3 | /˘· |
| ‘The fretful stir | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Unprofitable, and the fever of the world | 10 | ˘/˘··/˘··· |
| Have hung upon the beatings of my heart;’ | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.