Sleep
O Sleep, thou kindest minister to man,Silent distiller of the balm of rest,How wonderful thy power, when naught else can,To soothe the torn and sorrow-laden breast!When bleeding hearts no comforter can find,When burdened souls droop under weight of woe,When thought is torture to the troubled mind,When grief-relieving tears refuse to flow;'Tis then thou comest on soft-beating wings,And sweet oblivion's peace from them is shed;But ah, the old pain that the waking brings!That lives again so soon as thou art fled!
Man, why should thought of death cause thee to weep;Since death be but an endless, dreamless sleep?
Words in this poem
- distiller n.
- One who distills; esp., one who extracts alcoholic liquors by distillation.
- soothe v. t.
- To assent to as true. Testament of Love. [Originally, to assent to as true; OE. so to verify, AS. ges to prove the truth of, to bear witness. See Sooth, a.]
- comforter n.
- One who administers comfort or consolation.
- dreamless a.
- Free from, or without, dreams. Camden.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sleep is in the public domain. This text is taken from Fifty Years, & Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #17884; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: James Weldon Johnson, Sleep, in Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17884, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-fifty-years/sleep.html, id L08324.
Form and metre
Sleep is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABABCDCDEFEF manA · restB · canA · breastB · findC · woeD · mindC · flowD · wingsE · shedF · bringsE · fledF
- 2 AA weepA · sleepA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O Sleep, thou kindest minister to man, | 9 | ···/˘/˘·· |
| Silent distiller of the balm of rest, | 10 | /˘˘/˘····· |
| How wonderful thy power, when naught else can, | 9 | ·/˘·/···· |
| To soothe the torn and sorrow-laden breast! | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| When bleeding hearts no comforter can find, | 9 | ·/˘··/˘·· |
| When burdened souls droop under weight of woe, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| When thought is torture to the troubled mind, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| When grief-relieving tears refuse to flow; | 10 | ··˘/˘·˘/·· |
| 'Tis then thou comest on soft-beating wings, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And sweet oblivion's peace from them is shed; | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| But ah, the old pain that the waking brings! | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| That lives again so soon as thou art fled! | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Man, why should thought of death cause thee to weep; | 10 | ·········· |
| Since death be but an endless, dreamless sleep? | 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.