Come Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot of Peace
by Sir Philip Sidney

English poet, courtier, patron of poets and scholars. One of the great literary figures of Elizabethan England, his heroic prose romance, the Arcadia (1580, revised 1584) was the most important work of prose fiction in sixteenth-century England. He wrote the first great Elizabethan sonnet cycles, Astrophil and Stella (1582), a sequence of one hundred and eight sonnets and eleven songs which explore the mind of the lover. His Defense of Poesie (1589) was the finest work of Elizabethan literary criticism. His successful experiments and technique influenced many other Renaissance poets like Spenser, Campion, Drayton and Jonson.

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Come Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot of Peace
by Sir Philip Sidney

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the press
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw!
O make in me those civil wars to cease! -
I will good tribute pay if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf of noise and blind of light,
A rosy garland, and a weary head;
And if these things, as being thine in right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

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Come Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot of Peace by Sir Philip Sidney