Sleep

Sleep

A thousand angels watch'd him sleep
(His slumbers, ah, were ever deep)
And she, with gazing eyes as they
Approaching softly where he lay
Did ever silent keep

She touch’d his cold and pallor’d clay
And wept (her weary tears were gray)
And as she stood there sad and bleak
She bent to kiss his lifeless cheek
And curs’d the light of day

-jwm


Of the Poem (Inspiration):

The inspiration for the poem above came from a short, albeit quite shocking, poem I read some two to three years ago called, Another (Here a Pretty Baby Lies). It was written by a 17th century Cavalier poet, Robert Herrick (a poet that I hadn’t really studied much until recently).

Here it is in its entirety is as follows:

Here a pretty baby lies
Sung asleep with lullabies:
Pray be silent and not stir
Th' easy earth that covers her.

In the first three lines of his poem one imagines a baby asleep in a crib; but then, shockingly, one comes to realize that the poem speaks of the burial of a child. In my poem 'sleep' as symbolic of death isn’t openly articulated until the second stanza (much like the fourth line in Herrick’s piece).

Anyhow, although Herrick's poem is much more intense, I'm utterly satisfied with the finished work. Hope you are as well ...