Sleep and Poetry (1816) is a poem by the English Romantic poet John Keats. It was started late one evening while staying the night at Leigh Hunt's cottage. It is often cited as a clear example of Keats's bower-centric poetry, yet it contains lines that make such a simplistic reading problematic, such as: 'First the realm I'll pass/Of Flora, and old Pan ... I must pass them for a nobler life,/Where I may find the agonies, the strife /Of human hearts' (101-102; 123-125).
Furthermore, Keats defends his early 'bower-centric' subject matter, which hearkens back to the classical poetic tradition of Homer and Virgil. Keats mounts an attack against Alexander Pope and many of his own fellow Romantic poets by downplaying their poetic departures into the imaginary: 'with a puling infant's force/They sway'd about upon a rocking horse,/And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal soul'd!' (185-7). Although written in simplistic rhyming couplets, the gradual turn towards inwardness serves as an important anticipation for Keats's later poetry.
Famous quotes containing the words sleep and, sleep and/or poetry:
“His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death:
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)
“Like sleep disturbances, some worries at separation can be expected in the second year. If you accept this, then you will avoid reacting to this anxiety as if it’s your fault. A mother who feels guilty will appear anxious to the child, as if to affirm the child’s anxiety. By contrast, a parent who understands that separation anxiety is normal is more likely to react in a way that soothes and reassures the child.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)