10 Luxurious Linens

Though many poets have extolled the merits of sleep (and perchance dreams) as well as the delightful things one might do in bed, few have taken up bedding itself with the gusto of the 19th-century British poet and humorist Thomas Hood. In the poem "Her Dream" from the Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg cycle, Hood rhapsodizes not about the woman’s leg but about her velvet quilt ("A fit mantle for Night-Commanders"), her pillow ("as white as snow undimm’d"), and her pillowcase ("in the finest cambric, and trimm’d / With the costliest lace of Flanders"), before finally exclaiming:  "O bed! O bed! Delicious bed / That heaven upon Earth to the weary head!"