Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night
Sonnet LIV. "Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night"
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish, and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night’s untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow:
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day’s disdain.
Samuel Daniel
English (1562-1619)
Samuel Daniel was an English poet born near Taunton in Somerset, the son of a music teacher.
Daniel’s first book, “Delia”,dated 1592, was praised by Edmund Spenser. It contained a cycle of sonnets to Delia.
Delia lived on the banks of Shakespeare’s river, the Avon, and the sonnets to her were inspired when the poet was in Italy.
This sonnet is made of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter. Daniel was a great reformer of verse.
Late in life Daniel retired to a farm called “The Ridge” at Beckington in Wiltshire where he died in 1619.
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