Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 5.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 22.

O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature's soft nurse! how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 1.

At the close of the day when the hamlet is still,

And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,

When naught but the torrent is heard on the hill,

And naught but the nightingale's song in the grove.

James Beattie (1735-1803): The Hermit.