Before Sleep

The toil of the day is ebbing,
The quiet comes again,
In slumber deep relaxing
The limbs of tired men.

And minds with anguish shaken,
And spirits racked with grief,
The cup of all forgetting
Have drunk and found relief.

The still Lethean waters
Now steal through every vein,
And men no more remember
The meaning of their pain.

Let, the weary body
Lie sunk in slumber deep.
The heart shall still remember
Christ in its very sleep.

Prudentius trans. Helen Waddell