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LINES 5 to 6 From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; Meaning- In the poem's second quatrain, the speaker's argument enters its second stage. While the first quatrain established the poem's main points of contention—that death shouldn't be proud because it isn't mighty or dreadful—the next few lines deal specifically with the evidence that supports these claims. The speaker compares rest and sleep to death, suggesting that the former are images of the latter. This is part of the overall project to diminish death's power. Rest and sleep are, first and foremost, entirely harmless activities. In fact, they are the absence of activity and, in sleep's case, the "switching-off" of conscious living. Furthermore, both rest and sleep have great benefits—and are essential to life. They are at once daily, harmless activities and important ways for people to maintain and restore good health. They are the necessary moments of inactivity that make activity possible. Accordingly, the speaker equates them with pleasure—rest and sleep make people feel good. If death is just a heightened version of rest and sleep, then, there is nothing to fear from it. The caesura in line 6 after "pleasure" allows the reader a literal rest to consider the importance of rest and sleep. Likewise, the long vowel sounds in "pleasure" go as far as to create a sense of luxuriance, deliberately at odds with the seemingly urgent topic of the poem. In this sense, then, the speaker is temporarily holding Death at bay and exerting his own control.