Sleepers

“ Usually when I enquire, I find that the sleepers were on guard or picket the night previous. We let them sleep on. They are wise; none of us know how far we have to go or how many nights of wakefulness lie before us. ”

“ Poor sleepers should endeavour to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The amount of sleep is greatly influenced by habit, and, contrary to what might have been anticipated, we find that exceptionally brief sleepers have generally been men of the greatest mental calibre. ”

“ well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream.'
But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a Reality? ”

“ Even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe ”

“ It was assumed, of course, that the ordinary traffic would be, for the time being, entirely suspended, that land could be freely encroached upon whenever necessary for the construction of temporary platforms of sleepers and ballast, for loading and unloading horses and artillery, and for other purposes, and that all the railways could be worked as one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 restlessness is allayed, and a quiet state of body and mind succeeds. It needs but a suggestion to induce him to retire for the night. After being a few minutes in bed, sleep steals over him, and his heavy breathing tells that he is in the world of dreams. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the nape of his neck bathing in cool blue watercress,
Sleeping; he is stretched out on the grass, under the skies,
Pale in his green bed where the light falls like rain.
Feet in the gladiolas, he is sleeping. Smiling like
A sick child would smile, he takes a nap:
Nature, rock him warmly: he is cold. ”

“ A sunken precinct here we keep,
With woven wiles of endless sleep;
Our twisted stems of sere-hued green,
Our pallid blooms what sun has seen?
And he that tastes our magic breath
Shall sleep that sleep whose name is death. ”

“ Let not night herself be all, as it were, the special and peculiar property of sleep. Let not half thy life be useless through the senselessness of slumber. Divide the time of night between sleep and prayer. Nay, let thy slumbers be themselves experiences in piety; for it is only natural that our sleeping dreams should be for the most part echoes of the anxieties of the day. ”

“ The ancients called Sleep the brother of Death; but, exact as they were in their definitions, in my opinion, they are ungrateful to Sleep: it is the restorer of strength; the source whence youth derives its energy, and health conceals its treasury. Ah, good gentle sleep of youth! how well one feels that thou art life! Lose love, lose fortune, even hope, if only sleep comes: for the time being, it will return to you all that you have lost. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We know that the surface idea connected with sleep is that of resting. The eyes of the sleeper ache no more with the glare of light or with the rush of tears; his ears are teased no more with the noise of strife or the murmur of suffering ”

“ TO SLEEP.
O gentle Sleep! do they belong to thee,
These twinklings of oblivion? Thou dost love
To sit in meekness, like the brooding Dove,
A Captive never wishing to be free.
This tiresome night, O Sleep! ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, Harry, can you tell me what passes in that state of sleep when I or you or any other sleeper is shut up from every human eye; when all the doors of the body are closed, and all the windows darkened? ”

“ And again, when sleep Has bound our members down in slumber soft And all the body lies in deep repose, Yet then we seem to self to be awake And move our members; and in night's blind gloom We think to mark the daylight and the sun ”

“ It was my foolish imagination, the effect of the poison.
The night was full of torture. My bed seemed to lift itself under me, then to fall again, then up again! I used autosuggestion: “At night all the Numbers must sleep; sleeping at night is a duty just like working during the day. To sleep at night is necessary for the next day’s work. Not to sleep at night is criminal.” ”

“ Here all may sleep, for no dread warder’s warning Can come with clang of care and garish day; They sleep the sleep of night that knows no morning, No fierce noon-heats or chill at evening grey; No sound of those who watch or weep or pray [Pg 185] May enter here to stir the long, long rest Of those who slumber on oblivion’s breast. ”

“ I did not go to sleep. There was too much movement about; not too much to disturb sleep, but too much to disturb the peace of mind of one suspicious as myself. Feet were shuffling about, voices muttering. ”

“ Sleep, my darling, naught can harm thee,
May no sudden fear alarm thee,
Let my singing rock thy slumber,
Baby, sleep!
Once within a lowly manger,
Mary hid our Lord from danger:
Soft and silent swings thy cradle,
Baby, sleep! ”

“ By what crime, O Sleep, most gentle of gods, or by what error, have I, that am young, deserved—woe's me!—that I alone should lack thy blessing? All cattle and birds and beasts of the wild lie silent; the curved mountain ridges seem as though they slept the sleep of weariness, and wild torrents have hushed their roaring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I slept,—not as men do who awake refreshed and cheerful, but I did sleep, passing from vague and shadowy dreams of being hunted down, to visions of the plot of grass, through which now a hand, and now a foot, and now the head itself was starting out. ”

“ This excellent and refreshing sleep falls like a soft curtain of oblivion and saves the man's consciousness from the jar and disappointment of an anti-climax. But not only is this sleep a restorative after the strenuous efforts of the transport, it has peculiarly refreshing powers, and many men feel that after such a sleep their whole system seems rejuvenated. ”

“ Sleep holds the mountain summits and ravines, the promontories and the watercourses; leaves, and creeping things, and whatsoever black earth breeds; and wild beasts of the hills, and bees, and monsters in the hollows of the dark blue deep; and all the wide-winged birds are sleeping. ”

“ I said it with my thought to the dark wings, and it replied—‘You shall pass away together.’ Then it came closer to me, like a watching mother to the bed, and I felt it come down on my eyes like a shadow, and then I seemed to sleep a long, long while. Such a sleep as one is half conscious of, and the refreshment of which he fully enjoys. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Nature has appointed the night for sleep; the sun arising recals all the animal species, and especially men, to their several offices. They who sleep (saith St. Paul, 1 Thess. 5) sleep in the night, and they who are drunken are drunken in, the night. Therefore, what can be more unseemly than, when all animals rouse with the sun, nay, some even before his appearance, and as it were with a song salute his coming; when the elephant adores the rising sun, man only should lie snoring long after his rising. ”

“ Now and again a sleeper would stir, mutter something in his sleep about his poor wife and children at home, and would sit up to ascertain what light was playing upon his face, would turn to the moon and then completely satisfied would lie down and relapse into slumber. ”

“ Among the ancients sleep was portrayed as a female with black unfolded wings, having in her left hand a white child, the image of sleep, and in her right hand a black child, the image of death. An author has described sleep as the "rest of the spirits, dreaming their tremulous motion;" another writer speaks of sleep as "the reality of another existence;" while a third says, "all men, whilst awake, are in one common world, but that each, when asleep, is in a world of his own." ”

“ Go into a room where a sensitive or “high-strung” person is taking a nap—not sleeping [51] heavily, as most men sleep, but lightly, naturally, as all wild animals take their rest. Make no noise, but stand or sit quietly where you can look intently into the sleeper’s face; and commonly, by a change of position or a turning away of the head or a startled opening of the eyes, the sleeper will show that he feels your look and is trying subconsciously to avoid it. ”

“ And far below the long vale stretched.
⁠As a sleeper she did seem
That after some brief restlessness
⁠Has now begun to dream.
(All day the wakefulness of men,
⁠Their lives and labours brief,
Have broken her long troubled sleep.
⁠Now, evening brings relief.) ”

“ Sleep, whether administered at home or abroad, under the soporific influences of an under-paid preacher or the unyielding wooden cellar door that is used as a blanket in the sleeping car, is a harmless dissipation and a cheerful relaxation.
Let me study a man for the first hour after he has wakened and I will judge him more correctly than I would to watch him all winter in the Legislature. We think we are pretty well acquainted with our friends, but we are not thoroughly conversant with their peculiarities until we have seen them wake up in the morning. ”

“ Sleep we cannot call it for it was more of the nature of a waking dream than refreshing slumbers; and, after enduring two or three hours of increasing restlessness, he sprang from his couch, and, while it was yet early morn, strolled forth to refresh his fevered brain. ”

“ Hours flew over the lovely sleeper, and the eyes of her watchers waxed heavier, till they wept themselves to sleep; and one—an aged woman, who had watched her infancy and384 gloried in the promise of her youth—after her eyes were sealed in sleep, yet continued, by the heavy sobs which burst from the lips of the slumberer, to manifest the extent of that misery which abode in all its vividness within the mind, although the body was wrapt in that state which men have called oblivion. ”

“ So I stretched myself beside Huriel, looked at the little white clouds in the clear sky, smelt the hawthorn odors, and fell asleep, thinking of Thérence in the sweetest slumber I ever had in my life.
I have always been a good sleeper, and in my youth I seldom wakened of myself. ”

“ In the simpler days of earlier civilization, when sleepiness was nearly as common to all normal observers as was the darkness of night, there was less difference in seeming between the objectivity of the two. In the Homeric poems, sleep conquers all men, and night comes down. ”

“ Instead of using the night for sleep, you spend it in reading; your bedstead is a bookcase, your pillows a desk! At the time when the wearied brain asks for rest, you lead it through these nocturnal orgies, and you are surprised to find it the worse for them the next day. ”

“ Rightly he said “asleep”—the long sleep that is the sweetest and happiest in that it knows no waking here; the long sweet sleep that no evil dreams disturb; the sleep after which the eyes open upon the light of immortality, and the weary heart rests upon the bosom of its God. ”

“ I therefore passed the gate, and stopped not till I had reached a neighbouring summit, crowned with chestnut-oaks and poplars.
Here I more deliberately reviewed the incidents that had just occurred. The inference was just, that the man, half clothed and digging, was a sleeper; but what was the cause of this morbid activity? What was the mournful vision that dissolved him in tears, and extorted from him tokens of inconsolable distress? What did he seek, or what endeavour to conceal, in this fatal spot? The incapacity of sound sleep denotes a mind sorely wounded. ”

“ Said the Englishman to Voltaire, "This was the day upon which we were to commit suicide." "Ah, yes," said Voltaire, "so we were, but to-day my bowels moved well."
4. The disturbed sleep, either as insomnia or an unrestful, dream-disturbed slumber, is a distressing symptom. For we look to the bed as a refuge from our troubles, as a sanctuary wherein is rebuilded our strength. We may link work and sleep as the two complementary functions necessary for happiness. If sleep is disturbed, so is work, and with that our purposes are threatened. ”