Letter to Joséphine de Beauharnais (February 1796), as translated in Napoleon's Letters to Josephine 1796-1812 (1901) edited by Henry Foljambe Hall
Context: My waking thoughts are all of thee. Your portrait and the remembrance of last night's delirium have robbed my senses of repose. Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what an extraordinary influence you have over my heart. Are you vexed? Do I see you sad? Are you ill at ease? My soul is broken with grief, and there is no rest for your lover.
“God bless thee, bride of my life's dawn, Where'er I be, to nobler deed thou'lt wake me.”
Falk, in a statement rich with ironies.
Love's Comedy (1862)
Context: I go to scale the Future's possibilities! Farewell!
God bless thee, bride of my life's dawn, Where'er I be, to nobler deed thou'lt wake me.
(20th March 1824) Metrical Tales. Tale IV.— The Troubadour
The London Literary Gazette, 1824
“Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee,
That she in peace may wake and pity me.”
Sleep, Angry Beauty
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 497.
(19th October 1822) Songs of Absence
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822
Original: Sei il mio pensiero che felicemente al mattino mi sveglia e che di notte dolcemente mi addormenta.
Source: prevale.net
“T is believ'd that this harp which I wake now for thee
Was a siren of old who sung under the sea.”
The Origin of the Harp.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
