The ebb and flow of emotions described in this anonymous two-verse text is perfectly characterized by the rising and falling of the melodic line in Johnson's beautiful and moving setting. The images "Come heavy sleep, thou image of true death" and "Come, shadow of my end, and shape of rest" are set in stepwise, weary, langorous lines that make a plea for relief from obsessive reflection upon fate. The third and fourth lines of each verse rise in slow crests, gradually building to bright, energetic melismas on "Whose spring of tears ... tears my heart with sorrow's sigh-swoll'n cries" and "Come thou and calm these rebels in my breast/Whose waking fancies do my mind affright." The final (fifth and sixth) lines are obsessively repeated, the concluding pleas of a "tired thought-worn soul" who begs "sweet sleep ... come ere my last sleep comes, or come thou never."

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