"O polished perturbation! Golden care!
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night, sleep with it now!
Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
As he whose brow with homely biggin bound
Snores out the watch of night."
In this same play, too, is found the familiar and marvellous soliloquy
of Henry IV.:--
"How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O Sleep, O gentle Sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch
A watch-case, or a common 'larum-bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude, imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafening clamor in the slippery shrouds,
That with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial Sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
Caesar, whom Shakespeare characterizes as "the foremost man of all this
world," says:--
"Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights."
And again, it is not an "old man broken with the storms of state" whom
he describes when he says:--
"Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies
Which busy care draws in the brains of men;
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound."
The poet also in various passages expresses his emphatic belief as to
what is the brightest blessing or the deadliest calamity which can be
laid upon our frail humanity. Rarely is a blessing invoked which does
not include the wish for tranquil sleep; and this, too, as the best and
greatest boon of all. His gracious benediction may compass honors and
wealth and happiness and fame,--that one's "name may dwell forever in
the mouths of men;" but
"The earth hath bubbles as the water hath,
And these are of them,"
as compared with the royal benison, "Sleep give thee all his rest."
The spectres of the princes and Queen Anne, in "Richard III.," invoking
every good upon Richmond, say:--
"Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace and wake in joy."