The print of Songs and Sonnets has bad numbering. I think these are sonnets nineteen and twenty. But I will not cite them as such.

We will not whisper, we have found the place
Of silence and the endless halls of sleep.
And that which breathes alone throughout the deep
The end and the beginning : and the face
Between the level brows of whose blind eyes
Lie plenary contentment, full surcease
Of violence, and the passionless long peace
Wherein we lose our human lullabies.

Look up and tell the immeasurable height
Between the vault of the world and your dear head ;
That’s death, my little sister, and the night
Which was our Mother beckons us to bed,
Where large oblivion in her house is laid
For us tired children, now our games are played.

____

I went to sleep at Dawn in Tuscany
Beneath a Rock and dreamt a morning dream.
1 thought I stood by that baptismal stream
Whereon the bounds of our redemption lie.
And there, beyond, a radiance rose to take
My soul at passing, in which light your eyes
So filled me I was drunk with Paradise.
Then the day broadened, but I did not wake.

Here’s the last edge of my long parchment furled
And all was writ that you might read it so.
This sleep I swear shall last the length of day ;
Not noise, not chance, shall drive this dream away ;
Not time, not treachery, not good fortune — no,
Not all the weight of all the wears of the world.

Hilaire Belloc