Sleep Is Supposed to Be

SLEEP is supposed to be,
By souls of sanity,
The shutting of the eye.

Sleep is the station grand
Down which on either hand
The hosts of witness stand!

Morn is supposed to be,
By people of degree,
The breaking of the day.

Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity;

One with the banner gay,
One in the red array —
That is the break of day!

First print Time and Eternity poem XXXVIII, 38
Johnson poem 13 | Franklin poem 35

■→IN POLISH


Text compared with the fascicle and prepared for publication by Teresa Pelka, available under any of the following licenses:
■Creative Commons License 4.0, BY-SA 3.0, and License 2.5.


■→Poems, first print by Higginson and Todd, page 150;
Fascicle final stanza exclamation, for sustained emphasis; dash alone for theme development, please search the ■→Notes for The Outlet.


■Notes for Emily Dickinson’s poetry;
Poems one-by-one print and fascicle comparison,
■Resource for Emily Dickinson’s poetry;
■Google Drive, manuscript fascicles.



Poems by Emily Dickinson prepared for print by Teresa Pelka: thematic stanzas, notes on the Greek and Latin inspiration, the correlative with Webster 1828, and the Aristotelian motif, Things perpetual — these are not in time, but in eternity.
■PDF Free Access, Internet Archive


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