Sleeping Beauty

“ Sleeping Beauty, which is another romantic tale that might claim to be the most popular fairy tale, has for its theme the long sleep of winter and the awakening of spring. The Earth goddess, pricked by winter's dart, falls into a deep sleep from which she is awakened by the Sun who searches far for her. ”

“ Or watch’d him sleeping—we indeed have heard Of sleeping beauty, and it has appear’d; ’Tis seen in infants; there indeed we find The features soften’d by the slumbering mind— But other beauties, when disposed to sleep, Should from the eye of keen inspector keep: The lovely nymph who would her swain surprise, May close her mouth, but not conceal her eyes; Sleep from the fairest face some beauty takes, 250 And all the homely features homelier makes; So thought our wife, beholding with a sigh Her sleeping spouse, and Edward smiling by. ”

“ That bare against the sky,
Their naked branches rear;
Leaves, buds, and blossoms lie.
So beauty’s myriad forms,
Within thy soul are sleeping;
While thou, upon their sleep,
A wintry spell art keeping. ”

“ This ideal Beauty that we catch glimpses of, now in morning loveliness, now in glooms of tragic terror, haunts us by day and night, in dreams of waking and sleeping—nay, whether or not we will, among the littlenesses and exigencies of our diurnal affairs. ”

“ you are the most sleepiest man I ever seed, Sleeping Beauty ... ”

“ Her wearied eyes, and e'en her sense forsaking,
She fain would rest upon the poppied rug,
Like some pale Orient deep within a drug.
But beauty is the dream of godly sleep,
And scare her eyes have fluttered, when a peep
Of golden fragments tantalize their sense
To waking; thus to try, with soul intense,
To reconstruct some evanescent gleam
Of something they remember. Ah! what dream
So fair as Psyche sleeping in a fairy ring? ”

“ The explanation was as follows: “The Sleeping Beauty had to wait for one hundred years in an enchanted sleep until she could be freed. Only he who was able to overcome all the difficulties through love, and had the courage to break through the thorny hedge, was able to deliver her. So one must often wait a long while to obtain what one longs for.” ”

“ The motive of the Sleeping Beauty shows clearly its relation to an ancient myth of Spring and fertility, and contains at the same time a problem which has a remarkably close affinity to the psychological situation of the precocious girl of eleven. ”

“ How few of Nature's faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings, of the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven's surface clear. It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; ”

“ Household stories from the collection of the Bros Grimm (1882) . "Sleeping Beauty" (1900) , a Spanish version of the story "Sleeping Beauty" (1926) , by Robert E. Howard "Sleeping Beauty" (1901) , a poem by Walter de la Mare "The Sleeping Beauty" The sleeping beauty and other fairy tales from the old French. ”

“ She thanks heaven that she was not born with such a face, as she takes a reassuring glance in the mirror at her own regular prettiness, and more marketable bloom. For, you see, this beauty is still asleep for her—as but a few years ago it was asleep for all but the artists who first kissed it awake.
All beauty was once asleep like that, even the very beauty your housemaid understands and perhaps exemplifies. It lay asleep awaiting the eye of the beholder, it lay asleep awaiting the kiss of genius ”

“ Then the second fairy rose in her turn and said: "After Beauty, Wit. The Princess shall be cleverer than any ordinary mortal could ever hope to be."
"I give her Virtue," said the third. And the Queen nodded her head and smiled, for though she esteemed beauty and cleverness, she knew that neither was of any worth without goodness of heart.
So all the fairies in turn named the gift which they had brought for Briar-Rose. The fourth said that whatever the Princess put her hand to, she should do with the most exquisite grace; the fifth, that she should sing like a nightingale ”

“ In tenderness: thought stretches hands
To welcome to the midnight room
Another presence:—a memory
Of how last year in the sunlit field,
Laughing, you suddenly revealed
Beauty in immortality.
For so it is; a gesture strips
Life bare of all its make-believe.
All unprepared we may receive
Our casual apocalypse.
Sheer beauty, then you seemed to stir
Unbodied soul; soul sleeps to night,
And love comes, dimming spirit’s sight,
When body plays interpreter. ”

“ The sensuous feelings engendered by sun-bathing, of the press of the earth under one when lying down in a field or under a tree, the soft beauty of the moon on a hazy night, the warmth and coziness of a fireplace as the rain beats upon the roof—if she will allow her body and mind to enjoy these kinds of things, they can help to awaken her dormant sensuality, can help her to move back from her dusty sensationless condition toward a reappreciation of the glory of the senses. ”

“ Nor open weary eyes,
For waking is but weeping
And Sleep is Paradise.
Love is a cadence trailing
Where broken music falls,
A hapless shadow sailing
Across deserted walls.
So still my heart lie sleeping
Till love's hot sun be set,
For waking is but weeping.
Asleep—sad eyes forget. IN THE GRAVE
Dear Love—do you wake in that land where my waking is done? ”

“ Thine eyes are as my lamp's eternal glow.
Amid thy beauty's temple I would fare,
The incense fragrance 'mid thy breath abides;
Like night, that all in starry splendour hides,
Let fall on me thy dark, luxuriant hair. ”

“ Might it not be that this host of angels is descending upon the sleeping world to soothe the restless, worried ones, and smooth the puckered, aching brows in quiet slumber? Lulled by their gentle music, or the rustle of their approaching footsteps, the weary one would soon find refreshing sleep. ”

“ It seemed to me, young mothers, that I understood you! sleep is the mystery of life; there is a profound charm in this darkness broken by the tranquil light of the night-lamp, and in this silence measured by the rhythmic breathings of two young sleeping creatures. ”

“ Sleep shakes his wings free of us as the day-star quivers overhead, and the quiet visions of the night pass from the kindly darkness and look out upon the new day through our lustrous eyes. There is no waking to the sombre laws that once set us limits in the world; there is no border 'twixt our dreams and our life: on flows the level tide through waking and through sleeping, through light and shadow, day by day and night by night. ”

“ The grey of the dawn, no matter how few had been my hours of sleep, never failed to awaken me, and, hurrying through my bath and dressing, I gat me out into the sweet breath of morning twilight while Nature was taking her beauty sleep and the dewdrops were waiting to welcome with their myriad smiles the first peep of the sun. ”

“ They were got while riding through a thorny thicket, the artist fancied, and thought no more about them, touching in the details of the desolate background. The man's expression was hardly human in his sleep, the fierce animal face was so stupid and brutish. It is wonderful how character is expressed in a sleeping countenance. The studied or unconscious control which we hold over our features when awake is overthrown in slumber, and the real nature is seen with no polite restraint or deceitful mask. A beautiful woman is beautiful no longer while sleeping, if she have a bad heart. ”

“ Days went by, until the added sum of them at last made three long years: and still Beauty’s life passed on dreamfully, in the palace of the Beast. But for the sweet-voiced thrushes and nightingales, which made melody in the rose-garden without, all day long and after sun-down,—the silence of that solitude might have made the girl’s heart sad. Within the dusky pine-branches, wild doves had their nests, and to her ear their note had human tones. ”

“ That was a dream of the mysterious night; but now we are broad awake—and see no emblematical phantoms, but the mere sights of the common day. But sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof—and it inspires us with affection for all beneath the skies. Will the whole world, then, promise henceforth to love us?—and we promise henceforth to love the whole world. ”

“ Crying—"Awake! awake!
Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour,
With its mountains of magic, its fountains of faery, the spar-sprung,
Hast thou wandered away, O Heart!
Come, oh, come and partake
Of necromance banquets of beauty; and slake
Thy thirst in the waters of Art,
That are drawn from the streams
Of love and of dreams.
IV
"Come, oh come! ”

“ For the rose, as all the world conceives, is the emblem of love; and the nightshade typifies silence.
I put my posy in a little vase filled with water, and when night came, I lay down to rest, with my head full of vague rhymes and unfledged ideas, whose theme was still my eccentric nosegay. Sleep, however, overtook the muse, and the soft divinities of darkness, weaving their tender spells about me, dissolved my contemplated sonnet into a dream. ”

“ And slept as the moon sleeps through Autumn nights
While those dear steady stars burn in their heights:
If Love so lived and ran and slept and woke
And ran in beauty when each morning broke,
Love yet was boylike, fervid and unstable,
Teased with romance, not knowing truth from fable. ”

“ Often, as a mere child, when lying awake in those nights, whose stillness have a quality of awe, the silence would be broken by weird, barbaric songs which wafted a sense of old, wild adventurous life, and in a curious quality of mystery I saw violet mountains sleeping in sunlight, above a sea of amethyst. ”

“ Sleep, pretty lady, the night is enfolding you,
Drift, and so lightly, on crystalline streams.
Wrapped in its perfumes, the darkness is holding you;
Starlight bespangles the way of your dreams.
Chorus the nightingales, wistfully amorous;
Blessedly quiet, the blare of the day.
All the sweet hours may your visions be glamorous,—
Sleep, pretty lady, as long as you may.
Sleep, pretty lady, the night shall be still for you;
Silvered and silent, it watches your rest.
Each little breeze, in its eagerness, will for you
Murmur the melodies ancient and blest. ”

“ But love and night and sleep combine In dreams to make her wholly mine. A sure love lights her eyes' deep blue, Her hands and lips are warm and true. Always the fact unreal seems, And truth I find alone in dreams.
THE LIGHT OF LOVE. Each shining light above us Has its own peculiar grace; But every light of heaven Is in my darling's face. For it is like the sunlight, So strong and pure and warm, That folds all good and happy things, And guards from gloom and harm. And it is like the moonlight, So holy and so calm; The rapt peace of a summer night, When soft winds die in balm. ”

“ SLEEPLESS DREAMS Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,
O night desirous as the nights of youth!
Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,
Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?
Nay, night deep-leaved! And would Love feign in thee
Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears
Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears? ”

“ Then, when the propitious hour arrives, and after the love-play, the growing passion expands, until the transports of rapture find their ending in the explosive completion of the act, at once the tension of his whole system relaxes, and his muscles fall into gentle, easy attitudes of languorous content, and in a few moments the man is sleeping like a child. ”

“ Her eyes are fixed upon the sleeping youth, and perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this beautiful work is the success with which the artist has succeeded in depicting on the sleeper's worn and weary face the sudden rising of a new and spiritual thought as the spell begins to work within his mind. You can see that an inspiration is breaking in upon the darkness of the man's soul as the dawn breaks in upon the darkness of night. ”

“ The heaviness of sleep seems to fall first on the outer senses, and of course makes them incapable of acute impressions; but if it goes no further, it leaves the imagination all the freer, and by heightening the colours of the fancy, often suggests and reveals beautiful images. ”

“ It is well that thine eyes are closed in sleep; for behold—see!—the brightness without is disappearing; sadness and gloom are settling on the face of nature; the tranquil night is changing her aspect; clouds are gathering, winds are moaning; the moon is gone:—but sleep on, sweet Kate—sleep on, dreaming not of dark days before thee—Oh, that thou couldst sleep on till the brightness returned! ”

“ She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that's best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes, Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. ”

“ When the stars give quiet light;
And let us offer our faint perfume
On the silent shrine of night.
Call it not wasted, the scent we lend
To the breeze when no step is nigh;
Oh! thus for ever the earth should send
Her grateful breath on high!
And love us as emblems, night's dewy flowers,
Of hopes unto sorrow given,
That spring through the gloom of the darkest hours,
Looking alone to Heaven! ”

“ At the approach of night, [Pg 249] all the apartments were illuminated by perfumed wax-lights, placed in lustres either transparent or of different colours, and not of crystal, but made of diamonds and rubies.
At the usual hour, Beauty found her supper served, with the same delicacy and neatness as before. No human figure presented itself to her view; her father had told her she would be alone. This solitude began no longer to trouble her, when the Beast made himself heard. ”