What are some texts/poems that deal with sleepiness, or the act of sleeping per se.Bonus point if it's in French
un homme qui dort
This Zarathustra did; and no sooner had he laid himself on the ground in the stillness and secrecy of the variegated grass, than he had forgotten his little thirst, and fell asleep. For as the proverb of Zarathustra saith: "One thing is more necessary than the other." Only that his eyes remained open:--for they never grew weary of viewing and admiring the tree and the love of the vine. In falling asleep, however, Zarathustra spake thus to his heart:
"Hush! Hush! Hath not the world now become perfect? What hath happened unto me?
As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted seas, light, feather-light, so--danceth sleep upon me.
No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake. Light is it, verily, feather-light.
It persuadeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly with a caressing hand, it constraineth me. Yea, it constraineth me, so that my soul stretcheth itself out:--
--How long and weary it becometh, my strange soul! Hath a seventh-day evening come to it precisely at noontide? Hath it already wandered too long, blissfully, among good and ripe things?
It stretcheth itself out, long--longer! it lieth still, my strange soul. Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden sadness oppresseth
it, it distorteth its mouth.
--As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove:--it now draweth up to the land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas. Is not the land more faithful?
As such a ship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore:--then it sufficeth for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land. No stronger ropes are required there.
As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest
threads.
O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe.
Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect.
Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo--hush!
The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now drink
a drop of happiness--
--An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh
over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus--laugheth a God. Hush!--
--'For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!' Thus spake I once
and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: THAT have I now learned.
Wise fools speak better.
The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance--LITTLE maketh up the
BEST happiness. Hush!
--What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall?
Have I not fallen--hark! into the well of eternity?
--What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me--alas--to the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!
--What? Hath not the world just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, for the golden round ring--whither doth it fly? Let me run after it! Quick!
Hush--" (and here Zarathustra stretched himself, and felt that he was asleep.)
Many romantic memory poems have a dream-like quality, contemplation and the inward eye being used to grasp the sublime and the transcendental.
