Mortality and Sleep

Death, sleep, and the idea of rest as a release from sorrow are recurring motifs, with love and death often intertwined as sources of peace or finality.

The imagery of sleep giving way to dreamier sleep suggests a merging of souls that borders on the eternal or deathlike.

Love is depicted as weary and destined for the grave, merging the themes of death and rest.

The entire poem centers on sleep as a metaphor for death, with winter's cry and a kiss promising eternal peace.

The dream vision of a charging army blurs the boundary between sleep and death, with the narrator moaning in sleep.