Care-charmer Sleep/sonnet/by Samuel Daniel
Care-charmer Sleep is a
sonnet in Delia. Like Sidney, Daniel
addresses sleep. In the first quatrain,
he describes sleep as a care-charmer, the brother of death and son of dark
night. He requests sleep to relieve him
of the agony caused by his unfulfilled love.
I the second quatrain he says that the waking hours of the day will make
him mourn his misfortune. In the third
quatrain he asks dream not to visit him during the night, unfolding the painful
desires of the day. In the couplet he
expresses his wish not to wake up from his sleep lest he be tormented by the
disdain of the mistress.
Lever praises Daniel for the formal perfection
achieved by him in his sonnet structure—a perfection unmatched in the work of
any of his contemporaries except Shakespeare—and for the subtle variations of
metre in consonance with the implication of these traits. Daniel achieves his effect with monosyllabic
words. Long vowel and diphthongs are
used to produce a slow movement in consonance with the heaviness of his
heart. The sonnet consists of three
quatrains with a final couplet, having the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.
