To sleep

• Themes

  • Sleep
  • Anxiety
  • Escape
  • Death/immortality
• Structure


  • lyrical voice that desires to go to sleep. Sleeping is associated with a place of wellness and calmness compared with the troubles of the daytime.
  • throughout the poem tension between night and day - depicts a distance between these two antagonistic spaces that we already mentioned.
  • the action of sleeping represents a new kind of experience that the lyrical - the action of sleeping will be a metaphor for death.
  • moment of rest similar to a sort of death, which brings a state of pleasure and joy to the lyrical voice.
  • This poem is a sonnet, a variant of the Shakespearian sonnet.
• "Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:"


  • Humans are pleased to be protected or ‘embower’d’ from light, to achieve forgetfulness.
  • Keats uses long vowels, making pace slow, particularly the compound adjective ‘gloom-pleased’.
  • ‘embower’d’ and ‘enshaded’ echo each other, not quite rhyming but of similar construction.
  • ‘divine’ - blissful state of sleep has religious connotations, as if sleep anticipates heavenly rest.
  • 'Gloom pleas'd eyes' - shutting eyes - death
• " if so it please thee, close, In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,"


  • More elongated vowels stretch the pace, notably ‘please thee’. Sleep continues to be personified, with the speaker addressing it as in prayer; hence ‘thine hymn.’
  • ‘hymn’, linking to ‘divine'. The speaker is heavy-eyed and willing to give into sleep. He seeks the soothing ‘forgetfulness’, a temporary respite.
• "save me from my curious conscience"

  • ‘curious conscience’ introduces mystery. The archaic meaning of ‘conscience’ is ‘consciousness’ - Hamlet says that ‘conscience doth make cowards of us all’. meaning awareness - Keats is saying he needs to escape introspection, that too much thinking and awareness, is more than humans can take - recognises that humans are naturally ‘curious’ and we will seek to understand our lives - dual forces at play.
  • ‘curious conscience’ are almost synonyms - known as hendiadys. use of two related words add to their importance.
• "Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul."


  • urging sleep to be quick by locking up the ‘oiled wards’.
  • 'ward' = places of safety - where worries are hidden - pace quickens where prompt action is sought - ‘deftly’ and ‘hushed’ are soft; we are still in the world of sleep.
  • wards are ‘oiled’ - implies efficiency and that the ‘curious conscience’ should be active again.
  • ‘casket of my soul’ should be ‘sealed’ - reference to death where his worries will be over - sleep to lock away troubles, to retrieve them in the future - ambiguous.