To Sleep
by John Keats

English Romantic lyric poet. His first published volume (1817) included On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer and Sleep and Poetry; Endymion followed (1818); many of his best-known poems including The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode of a Grecian Urn and To Autumn were written between 1818-1819 and published in a volume in 1820. His letters have also come to be considered as part of his works. Keats is one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. Other Romantic poets include Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Blake.

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To Sleep
by John Keats

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

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To Sleep by John Keats