“Asleep! O Sleep a Little While, White Pearl”

John Keats (1795–1821) · Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats · Extracts from an Opera · 1848

Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl
And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee,
And let me call Heaven’s blessing on thine eyes,
And let me breathe into the happy air,
That doth enfold and touch thee all about,
Vows or my slavery, my giving up,
My sudden adoration, my great love!

Where this text comes from

First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-19.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/john-keats_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (2)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L7.

Cite this poem

John Keats (1795–1821). ““Asleep! O Sleep a Little While, White Pearl”.” First published in Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/john-keats/asleep-o-sleep-a-little-while-white-pearl/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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