Sleep (Maurice Besly)

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• (Posted 2023-09-22)  CPDL #75636:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2023-09-22).   Score information: Letter, 8 pages, 591 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Sleep
Composer: Maurice Besly
Lyricist: John Keats
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1922 J. Curwen & Sons
Description: 

Original text and translations

English text

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
   Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower’d from 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 Amen, ere thy poppy throws
   Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd 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 oilèd wards,
   And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.