Top 71 Sleep Poetry Quotes
#1. (My dove my little one
tonight there will be wine and drunken suitors
from the logging camps to pin you down
in the outlying lands of sleep
where all roads lead back to the home-village
and water may be walked on)
Al Purdy
#2. you clutter my mind
thoughts of you, thoughts of me with you
thoughts that keep me from rest
that ull me to sleep at night
your words are like butter
they're smooth and they're rich
and they make the bitter bits better
Madisen Kuhn
#3. It's two A.M. "To sleep or to write that is the question?" Whether it tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of my piss poor punctuation or take arms against a sea of keys with so many new possibilities.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
#4. I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou are not there;
I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,
And press the common air.
John Clare
#5. Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
Mark Strand
#6. Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
Alfred Tennyson
#7. Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our minds, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of the race.
Stanley Kunitz
#8. Sleep my baby, rock-a-bye,
On the edge you must not lie.
Wolf the Fluffy roams astray,
Will he grab you, drag away?
Into Furthest Darkest Woods,
Hide you under Willow roots?
There birdies chirp and squeak,
Will they let you fall asleep?
Stanislaw Sielicki
#9. The wind hums low with sweet exultation, sings its lullaby, while you sleep ...
John Geddes
#11. I said, I love you
when I meant something much
more specific, I should have said,
Please don't leave me,
I'm afraid to sleep alone.
Clementine Von Radics
#12. when I finally begin to drift
into sleep
your memory is the...first
and the moonlight
the last, to kiss my face.
Sanober Khan
#13. The dead cannot sleep long when the moon is round
The dead toss and turn deep in the muddy ground
The dead never rest well in the living house
The dead hear the secrets the owl tells the mouse
Shannon Hale
#14. The tags' chain stirs with the wind; and I sleep
Paid, dead, and a soldier. Who fights for his own life
Loses, loses: I have killed for my world, and am free.
Randall Jarrell
#15. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,
absorbing and thinking, eating each day.
Pablo Neruda
#16. Poems can get
sleepless too
and become
the loneliest thing
in the universe.
Sanober Khan
#17. I can't sleep alone anymore
and I get used to
company
too quickly. You're always gone too soon.
Charlotte Eriksson
#18. Dreams are chequered commentary made in sleep
Along the deeps of our desires,
moving like riddles through a magic glade
Lightly they touch the leap of hidden fires.
John Bradburn
#19. The best answer I can give is that poetry is all about the effect it has on a reader, and Robert Frost was very, very good at that. If you're asking whatit MEANS that the line is repeated [and miles to go before I sleep] I'd have to say I don't know. It's stylistic. But the effect is pretty clear.
Haven Kimmel
#20. savor
with me
the lushness
of a lingering sleep...
and last night's
dream.
Sanober Khan
#21. I rest in ease, knowing there are others out there, whispering themselves to sleep, just like me.
Charlotte Eriksson
#22. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
William Wordsworth
#23. Sleeping Atlantis
Silent cool waters
dancing upon her skin ~
silent cool water
ushering dreams within...
Muse
#24. After twenty centuries of stony sleep, what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats - from 'The Second Coming
W.B.Yeats
#25. Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep.
Laura Riding
#26. In school, I hated poetry - those skinny,
Malnourished poems that professors love;
The bad grammar and dirty words that catch
In the mouth like fishhooks, tear holes in speech.
Pablo, your words are rain I run through,
Grass I sleep in.
George Elliott Clarke
#27. We have no quarrel with the German nation,
One would not quarrel with a flock of sheep.
But, generation after generation,
They throw up leaders who disturb our sleep.
Alan Herbert
#29. concept: as i sleep, a star falls out of the sky. it makes its way down to me. it slips through my open window, floats into my chest and spreads its light throughout my body. it heals me
L.J. Buchanan
#30. You smile and draw me near and whisper, "Do as dreamers do."
I lean to you and whisper in your ear, "I cannot dream tonight my Dear. For it is you.
Shaun Hick
#31. The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!
Rumi
#32. Gone
She had only meant
to go to sleep
but the sea;
it rocked her
and in its waves
she drowned
in a sadness
so sweet
it engulfed her
(4:22AM)
Mae Krell
#33. My heart can feel the softness of a star
Only when the moon stays afar
I lay my mind on the pillow of sky
Where sleep dares not ever to pry
Munia Khan
#34. I do not want to sleep
for fear I might miss the twinkle of the brightest star
for fear I may never know
how the moon glimmers, in the darkest hour.
Sanober Khan
#35. He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need:
If thou sorrow, he will weep;
If thou wake, he cannot sleep:
Thus of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.
William Shakespeare
#36. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Theodore Roethke
#37. There are few greater treasures to be acquired in youth than great poetry-and prose-stored in the memory. At the time one may resent the labor of storing. But they sleep in the memory and awake in later years, illuminated by life and illuminating it.
Richard Livingstone
#38. It was quite a sad thing,
the way I watched you sleep like nothing could go wrong and I did not want to harm it, I did not want to blur it, but how could I not
when everything I've ever known has slowly gone away.
Charlotte Eriksson
#39. Poetry is like an unexpected noise in the night: the creak of a door, a footstep on the porch, the soft scuffle of a moth against the screen, which rouses every sense to an instant alert. So comes poetry to the drowsy mind, which startles a moment, wonders, and returns to sleep.
Christopher Morley
#40. a billion brains may coax undeath
from fancied fact and spaceful time--
no heart can leap, no soul can breathe
but by the sizeless truth of a dream
whose sleep is the sky and the earth and the sea
For love are in you am in i are in we
E. E. Cummings
#41. A poet's work ... to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.
Salman Rushdie
#42. Come, Sleep; O Sleep! the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw.
Philip Sidney
#43. The monsters were never
under my bed.
Because the monsters
were inside my head.
I fear no monsters,
for no monsters I see.
Because all this time
the monster has been me.
Nikita Gill
#44. Poetry is paying attention to life when all the world seems asleep to its beauties and truths ...
John Geddes
#45. In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.
Dejan Stojanovic
#46. At dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door ...
John Geddes
#47. And then
we no longer distinguish far nor near
They sleep
dream
gather branches
for this fire
the cloud brews
against the powerless day -
Long line of fugitives
beneath the snow
Deborah Heissler
#48. Today I write,
riots with insite!
Tomorrow I read,
take the lead!
Sometimes I sleep, health to keep!
But for now I write,
and got no gripe!
Leslie Austin
#49. What if you slept?
What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#50. From the mind which thinks to die, let my soul sleep tonight.
Santosh Kalwar
#51. At Night
Love said, "Wake still and think of me,"
Sleep, "Close your eyes till break of day,"
But Dreams came by and smilingly
Gave both to Love and Sleep their way.
Sara Teasdale
#52. there is some aching
that will only heal...
in the mosque of sleep.
Sanober Khan
#53. And all the hurts and scars / Of everyday were healed, and I would sleep / Safe with the good-night memory of stars.
Jane Merchant
#54. Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives,
When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives,
Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain,
But never will be sung to us again,
Is they remembrance. Now the hour of rest
Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling: it is best.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#55. When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep
W.B.Yeats
#56. Isn't it worth missing whatever joy / you might have dreamed, to wake in the night and find / you and your beloved are holding hands in your sleep?
Galway Kinnell
#57. Oh invade me with your scalding mouth,
search me if you like, with your nocturnal eyes,
but allow me to sail and sleep upon your name.
Pablo Neruda
#58. I wanted to be wanted and he was very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving. You could drown in those eyes, I said, so it's summer, so it's suicide, so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.
Richard Siken
#59. A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Salman Rushdie
#60. You can't rock the boat & act like you were just trying to put a baby to sleep.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
#61. Don't fall asleep yet. Contrary to popular belief, that's not where dreams get accomplished.
George Watsky
#62. This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.
Walt Whitman
#63. I like the posture, but not the yoga.
I like the inebriated morning, but not the opium. I like the flower but not the garden, the moment but not the dream. Quiet, my love. Be still. I am sleeping.
Roman Payne
#64. Dear to me is sleep: still more, being made of stone,
While pain and guilt still linger here below,
Blindness and numbness
these please me alone;
Then do not wake me, keep your voices low.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
#65. My sacred landscape is the foothills of the stars - I go there often to sleep ...
John Geddes
#66. Oh dear sunday, I want to sleep in your arms and have fun day.
Santosh Kalwar
#67. Can't even sleep through the night without you and those sun-dried ginger ale complected limbs crocheted into my thighs ...
Brandi L. Bates
#68. By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness
Pablo Neruda
#69. How terrible, those dreams before sleep were - the worse kind, mixing hope with despair ...
John Geddes
#70. That men, who might have tower'd in the van
Of all the congregated world, to fan
And winnow from the coming step of time
All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime
Left by men-slugs and human serpentry,
Have been content to let occasion die,
Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium.
John Keats
#71. While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.
Alexander Pope
