S L E E P.
Sleep, the accustomed companion of night, inhabits the lower regions, though Ovid has placed his palace in the cold Scythia.
————————"In his dark abode
Deep in a cavern dwells the drowsy god,
Whose gloomy mansion nor the rising sun
Nor setting, visits, nor the lightsome noon;
But lazy vapours round the region fly,
Perpetual twilight and a doubtful sky;
No crowing cock does there his wings display
Nor with his horny bill provoke the day;
Nor watchful dogs, nor the more wakeful geese,
Disturb, with nightly noise, the sacred peace:
Nor beast of nature nor the laws, are nigh,
Nor trees with tempests rocked, nor human cry,
But safe repose, without an air of breath,
Dwells here, and a dumb quiet next to death,
An arm of Lethe with a gentle flow,
Arising upward from the rock below,
The palace moats, and o'er the pebbles creeps,
And with soft murmurs calls the coming sleeps.
Around its entry nodding poppies grew,
And all cool simples that sweet rest bestow;
Night from the plants their sleepy virtue drains,
And passing, sheds it on the silent plains:
No door there was th' unguarded house to keep,
On creaking hinges turned to break his sleep.
But in the gloomy court was raised a bed,
Stuffed with black plumes, and in an ebon stead;
Black was the covering too where lay the god,
And slept supine, his limbs displayed abroad."
Ovid.
The principal minister of Sleep is Morpheus, son of Somnus, who was the presider over sleep; the former was the parent of dreams, of whom, by a beautiful idea, imagination was said to be the mother. The palace of Somnus was a dark cave, where the god lies asleep on a bed of feathers. The dreams stand by him, and Morpheus, as his principal minister, watches, to prevent any noise from awaking him.
"Oh lightly, lightly tread,
A holy thing is sleep;
On the worn spirit shed,
And eyes that wake to weep.
A holy thing from heaven,
A gracious, dewy cloud,
A covering mantle given,
The weary to enshroud!
Oh! lightly, lightly tread;
Revere the pale, still brow,
The meekly drooping head,
The long hair's willowy flow.
Ye know not what ye do,
That call the slumberers back,
From the world unseen by you
Unto life's dim faded track.
Her soul is far away,
In her childhood's land, perchance,
Where her young sisters play,
Where shines her mother's glance.
Some old sweet native sound
Her spirit haply weaves;
A harmony profound,
Of woods with all their leaves.
A murmur of the sea,
A laughing tone of streams;
Long may her sojourn be
In the music land of dreams.
Each voice of love is there,
Each gleam of beauty fled,
Each lost one still more fair—
Oh! lightly, lightly tread!"
Hemans.
By the Lacedæmonians, the image of Somnus was always placed near that of death on account of their apparent resemblance.
"How wonderful is death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;
The other rosy as the morn
When throned in ocean's wave,
It blushes o'er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!"
Shelley.
———————-"The one glides gentle o'er the space
Of earth, and broad expanse of ocean waves,
Placid to man. The other has a heart
Of iron; yea, the heart within his breast
Is brass, unpitying; whom of men he grasps
Stern he retains."
Hesiod