Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, August 15th, 2025.

Today's poem is by John Keats, and it's called To Sleep.

And maybe this is consciously an allusion to Hamlets to be or not to be

speech, to die, to sleep. This sort of parallelism that momentarily equates the two concepts.

Or maybe it's inadvertent, but this poem also draws together the

states or notions of sleep and death, and by the end of the poem, has drawn the veil

between them so thin that it's hard to tell them apart, which is both a lovely and time-honored

way to reckon death, and it's also a sobering way to reckon sleep, which is always a kind

of little death that we succumb to, sometimes against our will, but sometimes willingly in faith,

that we will be granted the grace to rise again in the morning.

Here is the poem, To Sleep.

O soft and balmer of the still midnight, shutting with careful fingers and benign, our gloom-pleased eyes,

embowered from the light, and shaded 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 the poppy throws around my bed its lulling charities. Then save me, where the past 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.

This has been the Daily Poem.

Thanks for listening.

We'll be back next week with more poetry for you.

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