Sleepless

Various

Description

Sleeplessness has long been a blessing and a curse for many a writer. Detrimental to health and concentration yet frequently a fantastic source of creativity, sleeplessness has been both topic and motivation for innumerable written works. This collection brings together notable poems, stories and essays connected to sleeplessness written by some of the most influential poets and writers to have ever existed, including Shakespeare, Wordsworth, H.G. Wells, Dickens, and others. Highly recommended for poetry lovers and night owls alike. Contents include: "Nightwalks by Charles Dickens", "The Hours of Sleep by Alice Meynall", "Insomnia by H.G. Wells", "On Sleep and Thought by A. G. Gardiner, “Bells In the Rain, by Elinor Wylie”, “Insomnia, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti”, “The Sleepers, by Walt Whitman”, “To Sleep, by William Wordsworth”, etc. Read & Co. is proud to present this fantastic collection of stories, essays and poems for the enjoyment of a new generation of readers.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528790444
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SLEEPLESS
eSSAYS, sTORIES & Poetry
Written by Famed Authors on Sleepless Nights & Insomnia
By
VARIOUS





Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Books
This edition is published by Read & Co. Books, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


“Sleep, those little slices of death. . . ”
— Edg ar Allan Poe


Contents
ESSAYS
INTROD UCTORY ESSAY
By He nry M. Lyman
NIGHTWALKS
By Cha rles Dickens
SLEE P AND WAKING
By F. Scot t Fitzgerald
THE HO URS OF SLEEP
by A lice Meynell
SHAKESPEARE'S INSOMNIA, AND THE CA USES THEREOF
By Fran klin H. Head
STORIES
OVERTURE
By M arcel Proust
INSOMNIA
By H. G. Wells
ON SLEEP AND THOUGHT
By A. G. Gardiner
POETRY
BELLS IN THE RAIN
By Elinor Wylie
SUNSET ON THE SPIRE
By Elinor Wylie
INSOMNIA
By Dante Gabr iel Rossetti
THE SLEEPERS
By Walt Whitman
HOURS CON TINUING LONG
By Walt Whitman
TO SLEEP
By Willia m Wordsworth
ASTROPHIL A ND STELLA 39
COME SLEEP! O SLEEP, THE CERTAIN K NOT OF PEACE
By Sir P hilip Sidney
SONNET 27
By William Shakespeare
TH E FIRST PART
SONNET 9
By Will iam Drummond
THE LOVER TO HIS BED, WITH DESCRIBING OF HIS U NQUIET STATE
By Sir Thomas Wyatt
OF CONSCIOUSNESS, HE R AWFUL MATE
By Emil y Dickinson
IT WAS GIVEN TO ME BY THE GODS
By Emi ly Dickinson
WATER MAK ES MANY BEDS
By Emi ly Dickinson
A SPIDER SE WED AT NIGHT
By Emi ly Dickinson
SLEEP IS SU PPOSED TO BE
By Emi ly Dickinson
SLEEP BRINGS NO JOY TO ME
By E mily Brontë
STARS
By E mily Brontë
IN MEMORIAM
AN EXCERPT
By Alfred L ord Tennyson
INSOMNIA
By John B. Tabb
SLEEP
By John B. Tabb
SL UMBER - SONG
By John B. Tabb
DAWN
By John B. Tabb
THE TRI UMPH OF LIFE
By Percy By sshe Shelley
HUMANITAD
AN EXCERPT
By Oscar Wilde




ESSAYS


“During last night’s insomnia, as these thoughts came and went between my aching temples, I realised once again, what I had almost forgotten in this recent period of relative calm, that I tread a terribly tenuous, indeed almost non-existent soil spread over a pit full of shadows, whence the powers of darkness emerge at will to destroy my life…”
— Franz Kafka


INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
By Henry M. Lyman
"Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep."
— Young
The regularly recurring incidence of natural sleep forms one of the most important subjects for physiological investigation. Were it an event of rare occurrence, it would excite a degree of astonishment and alarm equal to the agitation now experienced by the spectator of an ordinary attack of syncope or of epileptic convulsion. But, so completely does the recurrence of sleep harmonize with all the other facts of life that we are as indifferent to its nature as we are to every other healthy function of the body. It is only when the mind has undertaken a critical observation of the bodily and mental changes which accompany and condition the phenomenon that we begin to comprehend its wonderful character. Ushered in by a waning activity of body and mind that no effort of the will can long resist, nothing could more forcibly suggest the idea of approaching dissolution if, from the very earliest period of unconscious infancy, we had not been accustomed to the dominion of this imperious necessity. The remarkable likeness between the fading of consciousness in sleep and its extinction in death has, in all ages and among all people, arrested the attention of poets and philosophers of e very degree.
Soft repose, A living semblance of the grave,
sang old Thomas Miller; and, describing, in Milton’s stately verse, the close of his first day in the garden of Eden , Adam says:
". . . Gentle sleep First found me, and with soft oppression seized My drowsy sense, untroubled, though I thought I then was passing to my former state Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve. . . "
"How wonderful is death, Death and his brother, Sleep!"
exclaims Shelley, echoing the marvellous strains that have come down to us from the days of Homer and Hesiod. In that venerable literature Sleep and Death are represented as twin brothers, sons of Night; dwelling in the lower world of spirits, whence they come forth to perform the will of the Ol ympian Gods.
The prosaic genius of our scientific generation no longer tolerates such lively exercise of the imagination. The splendid anthropomorphism of the Hebrew poet, looking out upon the silent night, and cheering his soul with the sonorous exclamation,
"Behold, he that keepeth Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep For so he giveth his beloved sleep,"
has become a mere memory of childhood. Wordsworth understood the full significance of this change wh en he wrote:
"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it has been of yore; Turn whereso’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more!"
". . . But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth."
If, however, despite the loss of much that was beautiful and attractive in the myths of antiquity, we take advantage of the years that bring the philosophic mind, we shall surely find in the scientific investigation of sleep enough to awaken “thoughts too deep for” words.
An essay from Insomnia; and Other Disorders of Sleep, 1885


NIGHTWALKS
By Charles Dickens
Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all night, for a series of several nights. The disorder might have taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at sunrise.
In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every night in the year.
The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold. The sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for con fronting it.
The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we were very lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently broken. But, it was always the case that London, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we made a divergence from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into a little property, come unexpectedly into a dea l of liquor.
At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out—the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman or hot-potato man—and London would sink to rest. And then the yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company, any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up—nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in windows.
Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men. Now and then in the night