The theme of the poem, which is a sonnet (a poem of fourteen lines with ten syllables in each line), is the solace that the poet seeks in sleep and perhaps in death. The poet begins the poem by directly addressing sleep and personifying sleep as a person. He addresses sleep as a "care-charmer" and "son of the sable Night," using alliteration, or the repetition of the initial sounds of each word. He also refers...
The theme of the poem, which is a sonnet (a poem of fourteen lines with ten syllables in each line), is the solace that the poet seeks in sleep and perhaps in death. The poet begins the poem by directly addressing sleep and personifying sleep as a person. He addresses sleep as a "care-charmer" and "son of the sable Night," using alliteration, or the repetition of the initial sounds of each word. He also refers to sleep in a metaphorical way as "Brother to Death," meaning that sleep is similar to death.
He then calls on sleep to relieve his woes and to be a time when he can achieve peace, unlike the daytime, when he grieves over what he calls, in a metaphorical way, "the shipwreck of my ill-adventur'd youth." In other words, he does not want to think about the ways his youth was misspent, and he presents the image of his youth as a shipwreck. He says that he wants to sleep without dreaming, which he refers to as presenting images of our "day-desires," another alliteration that refers to the wants and needs we experience during the day. In the final couplet, he seems to yearn for death, which would put an end to the discomfort and pain he feels during the day. The tone of the poem is dark and wistful, as the poet yearns for a different past and the relief from his thoughts that comes from sleep or death.
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