Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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And now in peace the sisters reign, and the world is divided between them. When care, or woe, or wan disease, steals for a time the mortal from his allegiance to the calm and blue-eyed Sleep, then do the sisters ply their magic arts to win him back again, and, by their soothing influence, lull him to rest once more, and again unlock the portals of the palace of dreams; then issues from the trembling lips the half-heard murmur of a whispered blessing on the

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In all times Sleep has been a fertile theme with poets—one on which the best and worst has been written. All forms in heaven and in earth have submitted themselves to become similes; and columns of adjectives have done duty in the service since Edmund Spenser raised his House of Sleep, where

“careless Quiet lyes,

Wrapt in eternal silence, farre from enimyes.”

No monarch has numbered so many odes in his praise, or had so many poet laureates “all for love.” These, though not so long, are quite as worthy as the one we heard when George III. was no longer king. Perhaps that same little tyrant, Love, has come in for even a larger share of what some would call “twaddle.” In the sunny morn of youth, these hung upon our lips, and dwelt in our hearts, with less of doubt than disturbs their present repose. Old age makes us sleepy, and we sing—