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A paper on a poem by John Keats that discuss psychological theories on dream interpretation and meanings.


Insomniac Hallucinatory Speculation
Once upon a time, there lived a man in Denmark quite divine. After his father slain, his mother he did chide. But an invisible culprit was not less to the eye, and so revenge and melancholy filled his life, until woe is all and he did die. Now on his gravestone rest these words wanting of wisdom in suicide.
Sonnet to Sleep
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me or passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes:
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
John Keats Apr. 1819
This poem by John Keats expresses the tranquility of sleep, which anyone who has experienced insomnia begins to understand over the restless hours of fast shuttering eyes. Sleep is the gateway to the unconscious mind, which many philosophers believe to be the portal to understanding God. Accordingly, that would make sleep the time to talk with God, whereas death (being the ultimate sleep) would be our completion and, therefore, transcendence into God’s graces. So by translating the poems understanding of sleep as to that of comfort, one could almost be as bold as to say that death is peace. With that understanding a whole new twist is brought upon the poem.
Turns out that this is in fact the epitaph upon Hamlet’s...