Written for the play Valentinian by John Fletcher (first presented by the King's Men, the early 1600s theater group of which William Shakespeare was a member and for whom he wrote plays), this song for high voice and ten-string lute features charming and extended melismas that are directly related to images in the text. Sleep is described, after a sweet invocation, as falling "like a cloud in gentle showers." These words are set to a brief but complex arpeggio figure of a light, flighty texture; later in the song, a similar arpeggio is applied to parts of the image "like hollow murmuring wind, or silver wind." An ascending scale figure accompanies seemingly unimportant words such as "of", "to", and "oh"; the effect of such passages, aided by the resonant vowel sounds of the words, is to create an exceptionally transparent, airy timbre, as though sung by a spiritual being.

© "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Rovi