review of the poen to sleep
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Please explain "To Sleep," a poem by William Wordsworth.
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BOOBOOSMOOSH eNotes educator | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR
Overall, someone who has been suffering from insomnia describes his difficulties in Wordsworth’s poem, “To Sleep.”
The title and the first two lines of the poem hint at the theme of sleeplessness even before it is clearly identified. For instance, the idea of counting sheep to put oneself to sleep is very common in the face of sleeplessness—even to a contemporary audience.
In the first four lines, Wordsworth describes the images that come into the speaker's mind as he tries to fall asleep.
A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky... (1-4)
The speaker lists the things he has laid awake imagining, in an attempt to sleep. "One by one" gives reference to the act of counting sheep. "Leisurely" refers to the rolling gait and relaxed pace of the moving sheep (1-2). The speaker refers to the soothing sounds of rain, "bees murmuring" and waterfalls—"fall of rivers" (2-3). He also describes the visions of "smooth fields" (perhaps a part of an afternoon nap in the country), as well as a "pure sky," with no hint of storm and nothing in it that would cause anything but a quiet calm within, conducive to falling asleep (3-4).
In lines 5-8, Wordsworth's speaker explains that he has done all he can think of to bring sleep upon himself (5). However, he has had no success—he has remained awake all night long—until he finally hears the sound of birds that utter in the orchard, breaking the silence with their song in the early morning, we imagine just before dawn (5-6). Even the first cuckoo makes a melancholy: we can assume it is because the speaker is still awake to hear it, having had no respite from the day before. Note that the bird does not sing, but cries—it is a sound of distress (7-8):
I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie
Sleepless! and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the...