Saturday Sonnet

Sleep is valuable, and the one thing that we have done (since we don't like Australian TV and were by ourselves most evenings) is sleep. More than we could at home. Enough to recover.

For the noise of the meetings and the din of the court pales. The poet wanted sleep for another reason. He was obsessing overmuch, and he knew it.

XXXIX
Come, Sleepe! O Sleepe, the certaine knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balme of woe,
The poor mans wealth, the prisoners release,
Th' indifferent iudge betweene the high and low!
With shield of proofe shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despaire at me doth throw.
O make in me those ciuil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillowes, sweetest bed,
A chamber deafe of noise and blind of light,
A rosie garland and a weary hed:
And if these things, as being thine in right,
Moue not thy heauy grace, thou shalt in me,
Liuelier then else-where, Stellaes image see.
--Sir Philip Sydney

I would submit that (unlike Ovid, who lusted far too much to love) the more universal experience is to love one person. Without that one person, we do not relax, we do not sleep, and we do not feel at peace. Most of us love a particular. The problem is when the particular does not love us. We want to be Karl Bonhoeffer, enraptured by one, for life.

But the times are fallen. Many of us do not have such a love. The stance of the lover, pining for a married woman with whom it is unthinkable (and lethal) to commit adultery, is a false one.

What matters is that we turn again to the common mercies of God, of which sleep is one. And be grateful, content with the person we have wed, and remember her beauty from your youth. Bonhoeffer the elder is a better example. He had eight children, and loved his wife more.