Dormer

“ Why, it will be as much as I can do to sleep in here in my walled room; so loud and jolly the wind sounds through the open window. The unknown places of the night invite the travelling fancy; I like to think of the sleeping towns and sleeping farm-houses and cottages, all the world over, here by the white road poplar-lined, there by the clamorous surf. Isn’t that a good dormitive?
Saturday.—I cannot tell how I feel, who can ever? I feel like a person in a novel of George Sand’s; I feel I desire to go out of the house, and begin life anew in the cool blue night ”

“ XLI NORTH-WEST PASSAGE I. GOOD NIGHT.
When the bright lamp is carried in,
The sunless hours again begin;
O'er all without, in field and lane,
The haunted night returns again.
Now we behold the embers flee
About the firelit hearth; and see
Our faces painted as we pass,
Like pictures, on the window-glass.
[Pg 66]
Must we to bed indeed? Well then,
Let us arise and go like men,
And face with an undaunted tread
The long black passage up to bed. ”

“ He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.”
In this climate a sight of the sun is prized; but we love to see it most from bed. A dormitory fronting the east, therefore, so that the early sunbeams may rouse us to the dewy beauties of morning, we love. Let there also be festooned roses without the window, that on opening it the perfume may pervade the realms of bed. Our night-bower should be simple—neat as a fairy’s cell, and ever perfumed with the sweet air of heaven. ”

“ And then, when we retire to bed in a room with thick, woollen curtains closely drawn, and a fire in the room, how sweet a lullaby is the piping of the gale down the flues, and the peppering of the rain on the tiles and windows; while we are now and then rocked in the house as if in a cradle! ”

“ I would have liked to pull them right over my head that I might get warm again, but I was too tired to make the effort. At last, however, the cold was more than I could bear. So I put out both hands to pull up the blankets—but could find none anywhere. God! I wasn't in bed at all, but was standing!
The horror of that moment! A wild heart beat lawlessly at my side. One more touch of terror, and it would rebel in utter panic. Why was the dormitory so dark? Why had the little night-lamp gone out? And the wooden floors were stone-cold like the window-sill in my dream. ”

“ It is not worth while to give an extended analysis of its redundant details which, with its vast chimneys adorned with free-standing orders, niches, panelled surfaces, and pinnacles; its dormers with overlaid orders of pilasters, pediments, scrolls, and endless filigree ornaments; and its great lantern with inverted consoles on entablatures forming flying-buttresses (where there is nothing to be buttressed) , make up a bewildering complex without structural meaning or artistic merit. ”

“ The dreams that come floating through our sleep, and fill the dormitory with visions of love or terror—what are they? Random freaks of the fancy? Or is sleep but one long dream, of which we see only fragments, and remember still less? Who shall explain the mystery of that loosening of the soul and body, of which night after night whispers to us, but which day after day is unthought of? Reverie, sleep, trance—such are the stages between the world of man and the world of spirits. Dreaming but deepens as we advance. ”

“ With the starry heavens above me, and having the earth for my bed, I roll myself in a blanket, and without a dream to disturb my repose, pass the night in quiet, and never awake till the eye-lids of morning are opened, and the penetrating rays of the sun look through the surrounding foliage. ”

“ Then to bed with a vile-smelling lamp, in a wide, low-ceilinged sleeping room, where the sheets were odorous of bog-myrtle and fresh as snow. Sleep is a goddess easy of conquest when wooed in such a fashion. ”

“ Two rooms away from me my daughter Liza says something rapidly in her sleep, or my wife crosses the drawing-room with a candle and invariably drops the matchbox; or a warped cupboard creaks; or the burner of the lamp suddenly begins to hum—and all these sounds, for some reason, excite me.
To lie awake at night means to be at every moment conscious of being abnormal, and so I look forward with impatience to the morning and the day when I have a right to be awake. Many wearisome hours pass before the cock crows in the yard. ”

“ Bed? Here was bed enough, here on the warm grass, with the moonlight for a coverlet of silver lace and the breath of the night to soothe him to sleep. He stretched himself out on the ground with his arms under his head and his face full in the radiance of the great white world above him. ”

“ Persons who walk in their sleep, as I know from experience, get out of bed with their eyes open, see and feel the objects about them, open the window, and leisurely survey the opposite trees and houses, long before they recollect where they are, or before the fresh air and the regular succession of known objects dispel the drowsy phantoms of the night. ”

“ The household came to bed, the night-light was lit, the dormitory hushed. Sleep soon reigned: over those pillows, sleep won an easy supremacy: contented sovereign over heads and hearts which did not ache—he passed by the unquiet. ”

“ Or, it may be, there lurked darkly in her mind the ancient secret Celtic dread of sleeping in the bed where any of one's own blood-kin has died: the dread of the whisper that is on the pillow in the dark hours, of the hand that gropes along the coverlet, of the chill breath that comes without cause and stirs the hair as it falls suddenly upon the cheek of the awakened sleeper. ”

“ The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.
Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.
I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers. ”

“ It is a strange thing this bed, this mimic grave, where we stretch our tired limbs and sink away so quietly into the silence and rest. "O bed, O bed, delicious bed, that heaven on earth to the weary head," as sang poor Hood, you are a kind old nurse to us fretful boys and girls. Clever and foolish, naughty and good, you take us all in your motherly lap and hush our wayward crying. The strong man full of care—the sick man full of pain—the little maiden sobbing for her faithless lover—like children we lay our aching heads on your white bosom, and you gently soothe us off to by-by. ”

“ Sometimes at night I have thought I have heard footsteps in the garden, and have got quietly out of bed lest I should wake him, and gone to the window to look out, but there has been only dark or the greyness of the morning, and I have gone crying back to bed again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You know how one wakes the sleepy concierge, how one takes one's candle, climbs up hundreds and hundreds of smooth stairs, following the slipshod footfalls of a half-awakened guide upward through Rembrandt's own shadows, and how one's final sleep is sweetened by the little inconveniences of a strange bare room and of a strange hard bed. ”

“ People depart early to bed. But the search for petty utilities by the feeble light of candle, the cramped bedroom, the cheerless difference from home, produce a feeling of discomfort which, combined with the early retirement, the noise and tramping about the corridors, the creaking of ships’ gearing dimly heard, and the thoughts arising,—which have little in them of the land of promise and more of the morn,—all keep the pilgrim long restless upon bed ”

“ The dreary bedroom, the empty cradles with the little beds in them, all the absolute silence, like an autumn fog, interrupted only by the ticking of the clock and the periodic falling of the chestnuts—it is as though you all were dead. ”

“ So silent was the clear cool house,
It seemed a house of sleep.
And sure, when she pushed open the door,
Rapt in the stillness there,
Her mother sat, with stooping head,
Asleep upon a chair;
Fast — fast asleep ”

“ Now, when all the dormitory is asleep; when the lighted windowpanes have ceased to cast their gleams upon the snow; when the streets are deserted, the pool-rooms closed, and the last good-fellow has gone to bed, and only oneself is awake, then we have the full enjoyment of our quiet study lamp-light. We may yawn once or twice, a creak on the stair may startle us,—but we do not go to bed. We reach out our hand for some favorite volume, Stevenson's Garden of Verses, Underwoods, or Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: and read far on into the night towards cock-crow. ”

“ And is my room habitable, on the shady side, away from the stairs, with a view, with a hair-mattress?" I assured him that mosquitoes were unknown, and that his room was the best, and his mattress the softest in the house. Was he tired? how had he been?
"Don't ask me. I'm in an extremely critical state. Tired? Tired is a word for well people! When I'm tired I shall go to bed and die. ”

“ Just keep your ears open any time after midnight, when you are lying in bed in a lone attic of a dark night. What horrid, strange, suggestive, unaccountable noises you will hear! The stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead things seem to be alive. ”

“ I was fairly on the qui vive for something to happen, and, after ten minutes' more fruitless attempts to sleep, I tumbled out of bed with a groan, wrapped myself in the thick dressing-gown which had startled me a short time before, and, raking together the dying fire into a comfortable blaze, I settled myself in the easy chair before it, and, with my feet on another, resigned myself to wakefulness. ”

“ Where every one is a sleepy-head,
And the onlywhere to go is Bed—
Where all of us like to be.”
“Very true,” said the Bear, disconsolately, when the song was done. “But what’s the use of going to bed if you can’t sleep? You don’t know what it is”—appealing to Buddie—“to lie awake all night and listen to the servants snoring and you unable to get a wink.” ”

“ This evening will be my second night at the Hermitage, and I shall spend it alone. If you only saw the bed! It is a rustic bed, a monumental hymeneal altar, large as a field, deep as the slumber of the just—thalamus thalamorum! The mattresses contain the wool of an entire flock, the straw-bed contains the shucks of an entire field of maize. Can these chaste things have the presentiment of your nudity?
"Good-by, good-by. How slowly the hours go by! Who says time has wings? I do not know what I would give if I could go to sleep in this enervating languor, and not awake until Tuesday morning. ”

“ In short, he advocated sleeping all together on the bare floor of an ice-cold dormitory, the continual contemplation of death, the dreadful obligation of digging, while alive, one’s own grave every day with one’s own hands, and thus, in imagination, burying oneself therein before being at rest there for ever. ”

“ Each night, when all else in the house sleeps, the door of that room opens noiselessly, and the man enters and closes it behind him. Each night he draws away the white sheet, and takes the small dead body in his arms; and through the dark hours he paces softly to and fro, holding it close against his breast, kissing it and crooning to it, like a mother to her sleeping baby. ”

“ I woke in the darkness with the impression that some one was standing outside my bedroom door listening. As I became more awake the impression grew into positive knowledge. Though there was no appreciable sound of moving or breathing, I was so convinced of the propinquity of a listener that I crept out of bed and approached the door. ”

“ Within my chamber walls; I turn to see
The sweetest guest that courts humanity;
With subtle, slow enchantment draws she near,
And Sleep is here.
What care I for the olive branch of Peace?
Kind Sleep will bring a thrice-distilled release,
Nepenthes, that alone her mystic hand
Can understand. ”

“ At night, when going to bed, take care not to forget God, by whose favour thou hast lived through the day and thy life hitherto; and perhaps wilt not live till morning, unless this night thou make thy peace with God. Thy very bed, in fact, in which, as in the tomb, thou layest thy naked limbs to rest, in a manner reminds thee of death. And what is sleep itself but the brother and image of death? He is over rash, who, with God offended and unreconciled, ventures to commit himself to the night’s sleep. ”

“ Oh! would to God, beloved, to-day That merry shout or gleeful play Might drive your heavy sleep away, And bid you waken early.
But vain are all our prayers and cries; From your low bed you will not rise; No kisses falling on your eyes, Can waken you right early.
Bright are the skies above your bed, And through the elm-boughs overhead Are golden sunbeams softly shed, That wake you late nor early. ”

“ The huge bed, with its deep crimson hangings, the walls of similar colour, the carved ebony chest, the cupboards, the closet in the corner, looked deep and mysterious enough for anything. However, as my hostess and her attendant never seemed even to suspect that I should dislike sleeping so far from all companionship, I was ashamed to confess my superstitious feelings, and called out a careless “Good night” to them down the passage, just as if I were quite at my ease. ”

“ Having been in bed for three days, I think about my bed, and even in my sleep I meditate on it still, and I have come to the conclusion that the bed constitutes our whole life; for we were born in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it. ”