- Sleep
- Abraham Cowley
- Exported from Wikisource on 02/15/20
- For works with similar titles, see Sleep.
- In vain, thou drowsy God! I thee invoke;
- For thou, who dost from fumes arise –
- Thou, who man’s soul dost overshade
- With a thick cloud by vapours made –
- Canst have no power to shut his eyes,
- Or passage of his spirits to choke,
- Whose flame's so pure that it sends up no smoke.
- Yet how do tears but from some vapours rise?
- Tears, that bewinter all my year?
- The fate of Egypt I sustain,
- And never feel the dew of rain,
- From clouds which in the head appear;
- But all my too much moisture owe
- To overflowings of the heart below.
- Thou, who dost men (as nights to colours do)
- Bring to an equality!
- Come, thou just God! and equal me
- Awhile to my disdainful She:
- In that condition let me lie,
- Till Love does the favour shew:
- Love equals all a better way than you.
- Then never more shalt thou b’ invoked by me;
- Watchful as spirits and Gods I’ll prove:
- Let her but grant, and then will I
- Thee and thy kinsman Death defy;
- For, betwixt thee and them that love,
- Never will an agreement be;
- Thou scorn’st th’ unhappy, and the happy, thee!
- About this digital edition
- This e-book comes from the online library Wikisource[1]. This multilingual digital library, built by volunteers, is committed to developing a free accessible collection of publications of every kind: novels, poems, magazines, letters...
- We distribute our books for free, starting from works not copyrighted or published under a free license. You are free to use our e-books for any purpose (including commercial exploitation), under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported[2] license or, at your choice, those of the GNU FDL[3].
- Wikisource is constantly looking for new members. During the realization of this book, it's possible that we made some errors. You can report them at this page[4].
- The following users contributed to this book:
- Editor at Large
- Mpaa
- Zhaladshar
- Xenophon (bot)
- Danny~enwikisource
- Pathosbot
- * * *
- ↑ http://wikisource.org
- ↑ http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
- ↑ http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
- ↑ http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium