Sleep Song

'Deirín dé'

       Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Tá an bunnán donn ag laḃairt san ḃféiṫ;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Tá an túirnín lín amuiġ san ḃfraoċ.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Ġeoḃaiḋ ba siar le héirġe an lae;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Is raġaiḋ mo leanḃ dá ḃfeiġilt ar féar.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Éireoċaiḋ gealaċ is raġaiḋ grian fé;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Tiocfaiḋ ba aniar le deireaḋ an lae.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Leigfead mo leanḃ ag piocaḋ sméar,
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Aċt codlaḋ go sáṁ go fáinne an lae!

 
'A Sleep Song'

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
The brown bittern speaks in the bog;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
The nightjar is abroad on the heath.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Kine will go west at dawn of day;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
And my child will go to the pasture to mind them.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Moon will rise and sun will set;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Kine will come east at end of day.
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
I will let my child go gathering blackberries,
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!

Pádraic H. Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse, 5 vols (Dublin: The Phoenix Publishing Co., 1924), II, pp. 108-11.

Pearse's notes on the poem:

The Sleep Song which I add as a pendant to the song of childhood and death [this refers to the previous poem in the anthology: Pádraig Ó hÉigeartaigh's ‘Ochón! A Dhonncha’] I have pieced together from my recollection of a song; that I heard in my own childhood from the woman to whom I owe all my enthusiasms. Where my memory has failed I; have filled in the; lacunae from a version of the; same lullaby taken down in West Cork by Mr. Amhlaoibh Lynch. The refrain “deirín dé” is the name given by children to the last spark at the end of a burning stick used in certain games. With the thought in stanzas 2 and 3 compare Sappho’s “Hesperus, thou bringest back all that daylight scattereth, thou bringest the lamb and the; goat to fold, thou bringest the infant to its mother.”

Insomnia

Crimine quo merui, iuvenis, placidissime divum,
quove errore miser donis ut solus egerem,
Somne, tuis?

For what crime, youthful Sleep the kindest of the gods, or what mistake have I alone deserved to be so wretched and to lack your gifts?

Statius, Silvae, V.4.1-3. My Translation.

Normal Unhappiness

 There is a sense in which men may be made normally happy; but there is another sense in which we may truly say, without undue paradox, that what they want is to get back to their normal unhappiness. At present they are suffering from an utterly abnormal unhappiness. They have got all the tragic elements essential to the human lot to contend with; time and death and bereavement and unrequited affection and dissatisfaction with themselves. But they have not got the elements of consolation and encouragement that ought normally to renew their hopes or restore their self-respect. They have not got vision or conviction, or the mastery of their work, or the loyalty of their household, or any form of human dignity. Even the latest Utopians, the last lingering representatives of that fated and unfortunate race, do not really promise the modern man that he shall do anything, or own anything, or in any effectual fashion be anything. They only promise that, if he keeps his eyes open, he will see something; he will see the Universal Trust or the World State or Lord Melchett coming in the clouds in glory. But the modern man cannot even keep his eyes open. He is too weary with toil and a long succession of unsuccessful Utopias. He has fallen asleep.

Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1943), p. 624 [From G.K.’s Weekly, October 20, 1928].

The Sight of Another Man Sleeping

I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me. It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man's life—the priceless moments that will never come back to him again—being wasted in mere brutish sleep.

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (London: Collins Classics, 2013; 1889), p. 42.

Two Neo-Latin about Sleep

Marc-Antoine Muret (1526-1585)
‘Somnium’

Euge, an te teneo, mea lux, an somnia demens  
   Fingo mihi? Certè, lux mea, te teneo.  
Somnia non haec sunt. oculis nónne intuor hisce
   Flammeolósque oculos purpureásque genas  
Lacteolásque manus, et eburnae frontis honorem,
   Colláque non tacta candidiora niue?  
Dulcia collatis ineamus proelia signis,  
   Dum tuta alternis lusibus hora datur.
Me miserum! nusquam es. Fallax me lusit imago.  
   O dolor! ô animi gaudia vana mei!  
Quid queror? exacta si rem ratione putemus,  
   Vmbra est in misero quidquid amore boni est.  

'A Dream'

Oh! Am I holding you, my light, or am I mad,  
   Casting a dream? Surely, my light, I am holding you.
These are not dreams. Surely I stare into
   Your flaming eyes and ruddy cheeks and
Milk-white hands, and lovely ivory brow,
   And your neck whiter than snow?  
Allow us to enter pleasing battles with standards opposed,
   While a protected hour permits successive games.
Oh wretch that I am! You are nowhere. A false image tricked me.
   Oh sorrow! Oh my spirit’s hollow joys.
Why do I lament? If we think rationally about the matter,
   Whatever is good in wretched love is a shadow!

Marc-Antoine Muret, Juvenilia, ed. & French trans. Virginie Leroux (Genève: Droz 2009; 1552), p. 148.

Fidelis Raedle
‘Laus somni’

’Quantum tempus perdimus’,
clamas, ’dormiendo!’
Perditum non dixerim
tempus, si perpendo,
quam optata homini
illa res sit omni:
recreatio animi
et dulcedo somni.

Lecto mandant corporis
membra fatigata
Lethe poti homines
nec iam curant fata
dira. ita veterem
Adam ego verto:
novus fio iterum
dum ad mane sterto.

Totum refrigerio
huic est cor intentum;
iam accedet somnium,
somni ornamentum.
Mundi dum abicio
istius dolorem,
rerum formam video
plane pulchriorem.

'In Praise of Sleep' 

‘How much time we waste’, you shout, ‘while asleep!’ I would not say, properly considered, that it is time so much lost as spent in the way most welcome to a man. The thing for all is the refreshment of mind and the sweetness of sleep.

The body’s tired limbs entrust themselves to bed. Men who have drank from Lethe do not now worry about fearful calamities. Thus I overthrow old Adam: I become a new man again while I snore in the morning.

Completely at rest, for this is the heart’s desire. Now a dream, the ornament of sleep, approaches. While I cast away the sorrow of that world, I see clearly the more beautiful form of things.

Carmina latina recentiora. Veterum tibiis canunt nepotes, 3^rd edn, ed. by Rainardus Brune (Leichlingen: Domus editoria Rainardi Brune, 1986), p. 157.

My translations.

A Ruffled Mind

Charlotte Brontë, The Professor (London: Wordsworth Editions, 1994; 1857), p. 154:

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

Charlotte Brontë on Writing

I asked her whether she had ever taken opium, as the description given of its effects in “Villette” was so exactly like what I had experienced, —vivid and exaggerated presence of objects, of which the outlines were indistinct, or lost in golden mist, &c. She replied, that she had never, to her knowledge, taken a grain of it in any shape, but that she had followed the process she always adopted when she had to describe anything which had not fallen within her own experience; she had thought intently on it for many and many a night before falling to sleep,—wondering what it was like or how it would be,—till at length, sometimes after the progress of her story had been arrested at this one point for weeks, she wakened up in the morning with all clear before her, as if she had in reality gone through the experience, and then could describe it, word for word, as it had happened. I cannot account for this psychologically; I only am sure that it was so, because she said it.

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë,  ed. by Anne Taranto (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005; 1857), p. 507.

A Small Plot of Earth

O nimium felix possessum quisquis agellum
Desidis exercet pulso torpore veterni.
 
O exceedingly happy is he who cultivates his own small plot of land, when the stupor of enervating drowsiness strikes.

Wilfred P. Mustard, The Eclogues of Faustus Andrelinus and Ioannes Arnolletus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1918), p.38 [Publii Fausti Andrelini ecloga V.6-7]. My translation.

The Waking World

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), Opus epistolarum, 12 vols, ed. by P.S. Allen (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1906-1958), III (1913), p. 585 [‘To Henry Guildford’, 15 May 1519]:

Mundus resipiscit velut ex altissimo somno expergiscens; et tamen pertinacibus animis adhuc repugnant quidam, veterem inscitiam suam manibus pedibusque ac mordicus etiam retinentes.

The world recovers as if waking from the deepest slumber; and yet some still fight back with obstinate pride, fighting to preserve their old ignorance with fists and feet and their teeth as well.

My translation.

October Sunrise at the Xiang River

Bird Sleep

Jennifer Ackerman, The Genius of Birds (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), p. 157:

Sleep seems to play a role in song learning for young birds, just as it does in human learning. A growing body of research suggests that the human brain continues to process the learning of a new motor skill after active training has stopped and during the sleep that follows it. This may be true for birds, too. Zebra finches practice their songs by day and sleep by night.

Reading in Autumn

Susan Hill, The Small Hand (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 132:

    It was hopeless then to try and sleep. I read for a while but the words slid off the surface of my mind. I opened the window. It was raining slightly and the air was heavy, but there was the chill of autumn on it.

Bedside Books

Hope Mirrlees, ‘Bedside Books’ in Collected Poems (Manchester: Fyfield Books, 2011; 1928), pp. 102-10 (p. 102):

 Above all, they must not be dull, Dullness (pace Pope) is not a soporific. If it were, it would have its uses, and serious modern novels might live as lullabies. But dullness per se has never yet put anyone to sleep, and when we nod in church, the poppies tangled in garnered piety are the cause and not the parson’s homily, and if Jeremy Taylor himself were preaching on Christmas Day, and his text was Nevertheless the Dimness, we should not be a wink less drowsy. Even a detective story is more soothing than a dull book. Suave mari – a detective story may sometimes be read in bed. To extract the last drop of sweetness from this delightful hour, we must be conscious of our bed as well as of our book, and a detective story emphasises the conceit that our bed is a hare’s form, a warm secret refuge from hunters and hounds – while outside our sanctuary there is terror and flight and the surging enemy, mute and terrible.
         Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis,
         E terra magnum spectare laborem.

A Good Night’s Sleep

Bene dormit, qui non sentit quam male dormiat.
 
He who does not perceive how poorly he sleeps, sleeps well.

Notes:
Publilius Syrus, Sententiae, ed. by R.A.H. Bickford-Smith (London: C.J. Clay and Sons, 1895), p.5 [77]. My translation.

Sleeping Under a Beech Tree

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Lolly Willowes (London: The Women's Press Limited, 1978; 1926) pp. 112-113:

That evening she asked Mrs. Leak if she would lend her some books. From Mrs. Leak’s library she chose Mehalah by the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, and an anonymous work of information called Enquire Within Upon Everything. The next morning was fine and sunny.  She spent it by the parlour fire, reading. When she read bits of Mehalah she thought how romantic it would be to live in the Essex Marshes. From Enquire Within Upon Everything she learned how gentlemen’s hats if plunged in a bath of logwood will come out with a dash of respectability, and that ruins are best constructed of cork. During the afternoon she learned other valuable facts like these, and fell asleep. On the following morning she fell asleep again, in a beech-wood, curled up in a heap of dead leaves. After that she had no more trouble. Life becomes simple if one does nothing about it.

Ancient Poems about Loneliness and the Moon

Two ancient poems: both are about sleeplessness, erotic loneliness and lunar movements. The first poem is sometimes attributed to Sappho (Voigt 168B) and sometimes regarded as a fragment of a folk song:

δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες· μέσαι δὲ
νύκτες, παρὰ δ᾿ ἔρχετ᾿ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

(‘The moon and Pleiades
sink down, it is the middle
of the night, time passes,
and I sleep alone.’)

The second is the final poem in the anthology Nineteen Old Poems (古詩十九首), preserved in the Wen Xuan (文選, c. 520-530 AD), though it likely dates further back to the Han dynasty:

明月何皎皎，照我羅牀幃。
憂愁不能寐，攬衣起徘徊。
客行雖雲樂，不如早旋歸。
出户獨彷徨，愁思當告誰？
引領還入房，淚下沾裳衣。

(‘The white moon shines brightly, illuming the weaves of my bed-curtains.
Sorrowful, I cannot sleep; taking my clothes, I rise up and walk.
The guest’s journey is said to be a good one, but it is not as happy as the return home.
Alone and indecisive I leave the house, to whom can I relate my sadness?
I look forward, but return to my room; falling tears moisten my robes.’)

Notes:
The narrator of the Greek poem is a woman, indicated by the gender of the adjective μόνα ('alone'). In the Chinese poem, the speaker could be a man or a woman.

My translations.