Mark Akenside Quotes

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose.

The comforters head never akes.

life's best balm - Forgetfulness!

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!

Come to us and quackle and quank. Relieve us of our stirrings With your fangs so sharp and bright Take this blood that's always purring. Through our hollow bones it flows To each feather and downy fluff. Quell the terrible, horrid urge that so often prinkles us, Still our dreams, make slow our thoughts Let tranquillity flood our veins. Come to us and drink your fill So we might end our pains. - The Owls at St. Aegolius calling to the bats

Sleep is the best cure for waking troubles.

I'm trying..." How could I put it? "I'm trying to get far enough down the line so that I can remember." I stopped, then continued: "so that I can remember without the pain killing me" And the days were stacking up. And weeks. And months. It was now almost the middle of June and he'd died in February, but I still felt like I'd just woken from a horrible dream, that I was suspended in that stunned, paralyzed state between sleep and reality where I was grasping for, but couldn't get a handle on normality.

My God! I thank Thee for the bath of sleep, That wraps in balm my weary heart and brain, And drowns within its waters still and deep My sorrow and my pain. I thank Thee for my dreams, which loose the bond That binds my spirit to its daily load, And give it angel wings, to fly beyond Its slumber-bound abode.

Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives, When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives, Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain, But never will be sung to us again, Is they remembrance. Now the hour of rest Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling: it is best.

Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.

Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake; And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.

Sleep, Silence's child, sweet father of soft rest, Prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings Indifferent host to shepherds and kings Sole comforter to minds with grief oppressed.

I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.

There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.

Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.

Sleep just a while longer, that's it, where else can you go where you neither suffer nor cause suffering.

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

Sleep's the only medicine that gives ease.