These revision notes are A* at A Level, providing rich and extensive critical analysis of the poem. These notes go beyond A Level, also serving for more advanced courses, noting insightful points for different aspects of the poem, namely the language, structure, punctuation, the meaning of the apos...
NOTES: “Care-charmer Sleep” by Samuel Daniel Sonnet 45: “To Delia”
LANGUAGE:
“Care-charmer Sleep” -> There is something false about the description
“Care-charmer”, as if sleep is only able to soothe the pain as some sort
of trick but not provide a lasting remedy. It may be used as a pun: sleep
temporarily charms away worries, like a prince charming would. From
the start in the title we realise he is not waiting about, he launches right
into his wishes of being charmed by the cushioned haziness of sleep.
“Brother to Death” –> Note how he is “Death[’s]” brother, the phrasing
of this statement suggests that death is the epicentre whereas sleep is
simply an add on feature, a mere limb or branch of death. From the
preposition ‘to’ Daniel may infer sleep looks up to death, sleep being the
introduction to the main event which is emphasised by the capitulation
– “D”.
“restore the light” “With dark forgetting”-> With the first quotation he
seeks to bring back the happiness to his life, which given this poem is
one of many of Daniel’s sonnets composed “To Delia” we assume was
before his heart was taken by this woman, to which his love was
unrequited. The oxymoronic plea and contrast with “dark forgetting”
clearly shows his internal battle between light and dark, ecstasy and
depression: he wishes for this state of drunken happiness to return and
for his woeful memories be banished into the furthest point of his mind,
where they shall be forgotten. This ‘light’ seems to be like the lightening
of this burden by purging his misery in the emptiness of sleep, washing
away those dark memories. However, he seems to say that the way to
get the light is to firstly drown out his daylight sorrows – which are
inferred to be his painful desires of his unfulfilled love: “restore” seems
to want to reinstate something he previously had but then lost with
desire and love which took it all away - perhaps his self-contentment
and confidence. Alternately, given he does not want to be in the light of
day but in the darkness of sleep he may be using the opposite of the
general inferences “light” and “dark” may usually entail.
“Let waking eyes suffice” -> He expresses his hyperbolic level of despair,
here showing how to be awake is to be cruelly mistreated, giving us an
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