Heavenly Peace

"O soft embalmer of the still midnight,

Shutting, with careful fingers and benign

Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower’d from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:"

—“Sonnet to Sleep" by John Keats

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O soft embalmer of the still midnight

How peacefully we sleep beneath your white

And gentle hands. You work your magic now,

We know, with soothing whispers and endow

With strength to take the approaching day’s delight

O soft embalmer of the still midnight.

Shutting, with careful fingers and benign

The eyes too full of beauty to decline

Your old companion, the maker of pleasant dreams

Who shows each item better than it seems

By glaring day. Soft hands, almost divine

Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,

Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light.

Within a luscious garden of delight

We find ourselves enfolded in a pure

Fragrance of musky rose, a nightly cure

For heartaches we endure to stay upright.

Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from the light,

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine,

Float inward. There our spirits find

A citadel secure from every foe

And we are made a part of the heavenly flow

That gently runs inside the heart sublime

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine.