|
Poetry and Sleep
Here is a compilation of more than 130 poems/lullabies/songs related to sleep.
The poems cover a large variety of topics such as Narcolepsy, Parasomnia, Insomnia, Dreams and Sleep Rituals. Another topic covered in the section “Hypnos and Thanatos” is the relation or similarity of sleep to death. This is also a common image that is not only used in literature, but in art and music. This stems from Greek Mythology and the idea that the personification of sleep, Hypnos, is the twin brother to Thanatos, the personification of death.
We hope you enjoy these poems. Perhaps you may see a bit of yourselves and your sleep experience in the words of these poems!
Note: The poems and song lyrics are the property of the respective authors, artists and labels. The poems and lyrics are only provided for educational purposes.
INDEX
- I’m not waving — I’m drowning (Jean A. Gittins)
- My Dignity (Pam Boyette)
- Further Language from Truthful James (Bret Harte)
- Windy Nights (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Nodding (Steve Smith)
- Sleeping Passenger on a Wild Road (Norman MacCaig)
- Night Watch (Peter Davison)
- Sleeping (John Fuller)
- Pretending to be Awake (Peter Davison)
- Let not the Sluggish Sleep (Anonymous)
- One Desiring Me to Read, but Slept it Out, Wakening (George Daniel )
- The Snoring Bedmate (John V. Kelleher)
- Breathing Easier (Otto J. Reincke)
- The Sleeping Passenger (David Paul)
- She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep (Robert Graves)
- One Night as I did Wander (Robert Burns)
- Out of Sleep (Bernard Spencer)
- On a Bird Singing in its Sleep (Robert Frost)
- Talking in Bed (Philip Larkin)
- Bed Time (Peter Davison)
- Insomnia (Billy Collins)
- CCLXVI. To Sleep (William Wordsworth)
- Insomnia (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
- To His Watch When He Could Not Sleep (Edward, Lord Herbert of
Cherbury)
- Insomnia (Tristan Corbière)
- Pseudo Sleep Pretending to be Asleep (Peter Davison)
- The Plant of the Wife (W.R.S. Ralston)
- Sleep is Supposed to be (Emily Dickinson)
- Pretending to be Asleep (Peter Davison)
- The Plant of the Wife (W.R.S. Ralston)
- Sleep is Supposed to be (Emily Dickinson)
- A Night in June (William Wordsworth)
- “In Drear-Nighted December” (John Keats)
- Fall, Leaves, Fall (Emily Bronte)
- Frog Autumn (Sylvia Plath)
- Potato Clock (Roger McGough)
- Gil Vicente (H.W. Longfellow)
- Love in May (Jean Passerat)
- Dawn (Philip Larkin)
- Bed in Summer (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Up in the Morning Early (Robert Burns)
- Lullaby (W.H. Auden)
- The Early Morning (Hilaire Belloc)
- Rhapsody on a Windy Night (T.S. Eliot)
- Old War-Dreams (Walt Whitman)
- Bad Dreams (Robert Browning)
- Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream (John Keats)
- A Irish Marriage Night (Frank O’Connor)
- How Long and Dreary is the Night (Robert Burns)
- Bridal Song (George Chapman)
- One Night (C.P. Cavafy)
- How to Sleep (Philip Larkin)
- In the Dark (A.A. Milne)
- Morning Song (Sylvia Plath)
- Stone Pillow (Norman MacCaig)
- The Bedroom (George Bruce)
- Good Night (Eleanor Farjeon)
- “Coming at Last to Night’s most Thankful Springs” (Philip Larkin)
- Randall Jarrell (Robert Lowell)
- A Lang Sleep Owre (Donald Campbell)
- Lullaby for a Naughty Girl (E.V. Rieu)
- Day and Night (Lady Linsay)
- To the Moon (Andrew Lang)
- Sleeping they Bear Me (Alfred Mombert)
- A Dream (Jean Garrigue)
- Dreams (Norman MacCaig)
- “Thou Sleepest Fast” (Anonymous)
- Dreams (Robert Herrick)
- I Dream’d I Lay (Robert Burns)
- “Why did I Dream of you Last Night?” (Philip Larkin)
- When they Awaken (C.P. Cavafy)
- “I Dreamed of an Out-Thrust Arm of Land” (Philip Larkin)
- On Dreams (In Imitation of Petronius)
- The Dream called Life (Edward Fitzgerald)
- Presences (W.B. Yeats)
- One Third of a Dream (Jean Garrigue)
- “Within the Dream You Said” (Philip Larkin)
- Morpheus (Philip Sidney)
- Young Night Thought (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Bedtime (Allan Ahlberg)
- A Quiet Poem (Carol Berge)
- Solitude (Lewis Carroll)
- The Moon (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Bed-time (Francis Robert St. Clair Earl
Of Rosslyn)
- Men improve with the Years (W.B. Yeats)
- Waking, I Always Waked You Awake (Jean Garrigue)
- Music (Abraham Cowley)
- The Sleep (Elizabeth Barret Browning)
- Sleeping Compartment (Norman MacCaig)
- “At the Chiming of Light upon Sleep” (Philip Larkin)
- Before Sleep (Prudentius)
- Good Night (William Carlos Williams)
- Night and Day (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- The Sea of Sleep (Norman MacCaig)
- Thon Nicht (Donald Campbell)
- A Clear Midnight (Walt Whitman)
- A Lyke-wake Dirge (Traditional)
- Lullaby (W.B. Yeats)
- “For there’s Bishop’s Teign (John Keats)
- How Sleep the Brave (William Collins)
- Care-charming Sleep (John Fletcher)
- Astrophel and Stella XXXIX (Sir Philip Sidney)
- Bedside the Bed (Charlotte Mew)
- “Can Death be Sleep, when Life is but a Dream” (John Keats)
- Care-Charmer Sleep (Samuel Daniel)
- Ugly Waking (Norman MacCaig)
- The City of Sleep (Rudyard Kipling)
- Betrayal in Morningside (Donald Campbell)
- Skye Boat Song (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Waltzing Matilda (Andrew Barton Paterson)
- In a Herber Green Asleep Whereas I Lay (R. Wever)
- Doll's boy's asleep (E.E. Cummings)
- A Dream Within a Dream (Edgar Allan Poe)
- My Sister’s Sleep (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
- We too shall Sleep (Archibald Lampman)
- Recruitment to the Canadian Sleep Society (Mike Fitzpatrick)
- Canada conquers the APSS (Mike Fitzpatrick)
- The Dream (Kathleen M. Beauchemin)
- Don’t Quack-Up your Sleep (Sharon A. Chung)
- Sleeping Katz Family (Philip, Sharon, Lara, Justin Katz)
- I just Want to Sleep (Aviva Klompas)
- Sommeil, Sommeil/Sleep Sleep (French Lullaby)
- Ode to a Watch at Night/Oda a un Reloj en la Noche (Pablo Neruda)
- Slaap Soet/Sleep Sweetly (Boeti)
- n Droom/A dream or was it? (Sussa)
- Khwaab Martay Naheen/Dreams Do Not Die (Ahmed Faraz)
- Here sleeps the girl (Parveen Shakir)
- Tonight (Faiz Ahmed Faiz)
- Lori/Lullaby (Fahmida Riaz)
- Mom Mahal/Wax Palace (Kishwar Naheed)
- Jurm vada/Unlawful promise (Zehra Nigah)
- Sleep (Rangarajan Kazhiyur Mannar)
- Somnoroase Păsărele/Sleepy Birds (Mihai Eminescu)
 Chinese Poems Israeli Poems
- Daysleeper (R.E.M.)
- Dreaming of You (Selena)
- Sweet Dreams (Beyoncé)
- And Dreams of Sheep (Kate Bush)
- 03:45: No sleep (The Cardigans)
|
|
