Fifty Shades of Slumber

Sleep. That most mysterious of times. The unconscious hours. Everyone needs it. Whether it’s the recommended eight hours, forty winks, cat naps, power naps or other shades of blissful slumber. Sleep offers a respite from the rigors and challenges of the day. A chance for the brain to process what has happened and bring rest and recuperation before the cycle of daytime activity begins again. Also, perchance to dream or, if we are unlucky, the visitation of nightmares. But for some people sleep does not come easy. These can be wakeful hours of frustration or tedium where closing the eyes does not bring the closing of the mind and the slumber so keenly wanted. Part of the problem, in this increasingly frenetic 24/7 world is that we seem reluctant or unable to switch off enough to recuperate; we might miss something. But slumbered hours bring gains in health that far outweigh transitory loss. 01 - Fifty Shades of Slumber - An Introduction 02 - Rest by Richard Le Gallienne 03 - To Sleep by John Keats 04 - Sleep by James Weldon Johnson 05 - Sleep on Thine Eyes by Hafiz 06 - Ode To Sleep by Thomas Warton 07 - Sleep by Tagore 08 - Sleep Now, Oh Sleep Now by James Joyce 11 - Sonnet XI - To Sleep by Charlotte Smith 12 - Sleeping Together by Katherine Mansfield 13 - Care Charming Sleep by John Fletcher 14 - Sleep by Mirabai 15 - Song VIII - While Ye Deemed Him A Sleeping by William Morris 16 - Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal from The Princess by Alfred Lord Tennyson 17 - Love and Sleep by Algernon Charles Swinburne 18 - Nupital Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 19 - Celia, Sleeping or SInging by Thomas Stanley 20 - Idea's Mirror. Sonnet XXXVII. Dear Why Should You Command Me To My Rest 21 - The Indian Serenade by Percy Bysshe Shelley 22 - From Dewy Dreams, My Soul Arise by James Joyce 23 - At That Hour When All Things Have Repose by James Joyce 24 - Seal Lullaby by Rudyard Kipling 25 - Bed In Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson 26 - Lullaby by Louisa May Alcott 27 - Dreams by Robert Tannahill 28 - The Dream by John Donne 29 - The Dream by Amy Levy 30 - A Ballad of Dreamland by Algernon Charles Swinburne 31 - Dreamland by Edgar Allen Poe 32 - Angel Spirits of Sleep by Robert Seymour Bridges 33 - For the Bed at Kelmscott by William Morris 34 - A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe 35 - The Haunting Dream by Victor Plarr 36 - Dreamland by Christina Georgine Rossetti 37 - Hallucination by F S Flint 38 - The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe 39 - Good Night by Edward Thomas 40 - Good Night by Mary Gilmore 41 - My Sister's Sleep by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 42 - The Promise of Sleep by Amy Levy 43 - When Day Is Done by Tagore 44 - A Sleepless Night by Alfred Austin 45 - The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 46 - Sonnet XXVII - Weary with Toil by William Shakespeare 47 - The End of the Day by Katharine Tynan 48 - Sleepless by Sara Teasdale 49 - What of the Darkness by Richard Le Gallienne 50 - The Owl Disturbs the Bard's Sleep by Dafydd ap Gwilym 51 - Insomnia by James Thomson