Night lines
Words for the night
Lines about sleep and night from poets, playwrights and old books, gathered for the hours when it helps to have company. Each one links to the full text, so you can keep reading.
For falling asleep
- And the night shall be filled with music, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done
- A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: John Keats, Endymion
- The sea is calm to-night. Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
- When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet. The Bible, King James Version, Proverbs
- I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety. The Bible, King James Version, Psalms
- I swear they are averaged now—one is no better than the other, Walt Whitman, The Sleepers
- The sun descending in the west, William Blake, Night (Songs of Innocence)
Tender
- Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Alfred Tennyson, Sweet and Low (The Princess)
- Lie a-bed, Christina Rossetti, Lie a-bed (Sing-Song)
- Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, John Keats, To Sleep
- O soft embalmer of the still midnight, John Keats, To Sleep
- Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. The Bible, King James Version, Psalms
- Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, Thomas Dekker, Golden Slumbers (from Patient Grissil)
- But I, being poor, have only my dreams; W. B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
- Sweet dreams form a shade William Blake, A Cradle Song (Songs of Innocence)
- Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
- And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
- Come, blessed barrier betwixt day and day, William Wordsworth, To Sleep
For wonder
- Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Ben Jonson, Hymn to Diana (from Cynthia’s Revels)
- Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Eugene Field, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
- Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Starlight Night
- Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- I heard the trailing garments of the Night Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hymn to the Night
- Twinkle, twinkle, little star, Jane Taylor, The Star (Rhymes for the Nursery)
- Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Night
- From breakfast on through all the day Robert Louis Stevenson, The Land of Nod (A Child’s Garden of Verses)
- Alone in the night Sara Teasdale, Stars
- I sleep, but my heart waketh: The Bible, King James Version, Song of Solomon
- Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
- We are such stuff William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Wistful
- Will there really be a morning? Emily Dickinson, Will there really be a morning?
- Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! John Keats, Bright Star (The Last Sonnet)
- For the sword outwears its sheath, Lord Byron, So, we’ll go no more a-roving
- The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
- Care-charmer sleep, son of the sable night, Samuel Daniel, Delia (“Care-charmer sleep”)
- When you are old and gray and full of sleep, W. B. Yeats, When You Are Old
- and then, in dreaming, William Shakespeare, The Tempest
For the restless nights
- A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow; Charlotte Brontë, The Professor
- I have been one acquainted with the night. Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
- O sleep, O gentle sleep, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2
- Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 27
- A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by, William Wordsworth, To Sleep
With a small smile
- early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth
- ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?—But this is more pleasant. Marcus Aurelius, tr. George Long, Meditations (The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus)
- good luck betide him that invented sleep, the cloak that covers over all a man’s thoughts, the food that removes hunger, the drink that drives away thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that tempers the heat, Miguel de Cervantes, tr. John Ormsby, Don Quixote
- In winter I get up at night Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer (A Child’s Garden of Verses)
- The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. The Bible, King James Version, Ecclesiastes
- sleepe is that golden chaine that ties health and our bodies together. Thomas Dekker, The Gull’s Hornbook
- O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. William Shakespeare, Hamlet
- What three things does drink especially provoke? William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Still and deep
- I have come to the borders of sleep, Edward Thomas, Lights Out
- In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present,—I am rising to the work of a human being. Marcus Aurelius, tr. George Long, Meditations (The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus)
- Come, Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace, Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet 39
- Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, William Shakespeare, Macbeth