If you find it hard to get to sleep, there are various tried remedies, but we won't go into them all. Some folks find that reading poetry helps, particularly poetry that is known to you. In one case, a man of some years can recall much of the poetry he learned by rote in school. "In Dyfed's richest valley, where herds of kine were browsing,/We made a mighty sally to furnish our carousing .. ." - oh no, that's a war song. Not to be recommended. You want peaceful, romantic stuff.
In that case, you would be wise to turn, as another does, to CDs or tapes of birdsong. Can't fail. The best, to this man's mind, is a CD or compact disc of the singing of nightingales. This came as a gift from Switzerland and is hypnotic in its effect on him. It is of the nightingale ("thou wast not born for death, immortal bird"), recorded in more than a dozen sites throughout Europe; mostly in France, but also Finland, Romania, Greece. The background sounds are soporific, too - blackbirds, nightjars, woodpigeons, crickets, frogs, warblers, and in one case, faintly, the sound of a church bell. He says that now, when he occasionally puts it on when already in bed, he has gone to sleep before the first nightingale has ceased singing. There is another compact disc, also acquired in Switzerland Le Reveil des Oiseaux or `Birds Awakening' - the dawn chorus, if you like. It was recorded in a copse in the Alpine foothills and suffers from one disadvantage - like it or not, no matter what bird is singing, there seems to be a damned cuckoo in the background all the time.
Not that the cuckoo isn't welcome, but not at the risk of spoiling another bird's song. But it is worth having this disc. The company is Sittelle, Rue des Jardins, F38710, MENS, FRANCE. You can, of course, buy tapes of various kinds of birds, made closer to home. Some seabirds and shorebirds make delicate, tinkling sounds with waves breaking in the background. One bird brings back memories to Robert Louis Stevenson in the South Sea island where he was to die, far from his Scottish mountains: Be it granted me to behold you again in dying/Hills of home: and to hear again the call;/Hear about the graves of the martyre the peewees crying,/ And hear no more at all.Y
PS: The nightingale record is called Rossignols in French, and in English `A Nocturne of Nightingales'.