Tweet
The Pains of Sleep
by Coleridge
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and Wisdom are.
But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
So two nights passed: the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin:
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be loved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.
Background on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Poem
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote 'The Pains of Sleep' in 1803. It is one of his 'conversational poems' because Coleridge is the speaker. Coleridge was a sensitive individual who married a woman he didn't really love, Sara Fricker. He was talked into the marriage by a friend. Later, he fell in love with another woman, Sara Hutchison, who was related to his friend and fellow poet, Wordsworth, by marriage. For the rest of his life, he suffered from unrequited love as well as from physical ailments. It seems, too, that he was plagued with depression. Unfortunately, he became addicted to laudanum, a type of opium. This, of course, had an impact on his writing. It makes sense that Coleridge would have difficulty sleeping at times when he was dealing with such weighty personal problems. It is also astonishing that in spite of all of his physical and emotional problems, Coleridge could produce such outstanding poems as he did.
'The Pains of Sleep' has three stanzas, each detailing one night of sleep for Coleridge and each growing progressively more restless. In this lesson, we will analyze each one. The poem is a little lengthy, so hang in there!
Conclusion
Coleridge wrote from his experiences and pain. His conversational poems are confessions from the deepest part of his soul. His sleep was troubled because his soul, too, was troubled - by unrequited love and by the effects of his drug addiction.
