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LINES 11 to 12 And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? Meaning- Lines 11 and 12 return to the speaker's comparison of death with sleep. Once again, the argument seeks to deny death any authority. Both lines use anaphora to continue the line of argument, beginning in the same way as in lines 10 and 7 with "And." This creates the sense of an accumulation of reasons as to why death is so powerless, almost suggesting that the speaker could name more if it weren't for the confines of the sonnet form. Though the speaker has admitted the benefit of death if it is framed merely as a kind of sleep, even on those terms it is inferior. Poppy, which is a reference to the kind of opiate drugs that were popular at the time, is presented as a more effective method for sleep than death. Charms refers to magic spells and incantations, both of which the speaker considers superior to death in terms of bringing about sleep. The speaker frames this superiority in the first 5 words of line 12: "And better than thy stroke?" The "stroke" functions in two slightly paradoxical ways. First of all, it acknowledges the idea of death as a powerful figure. Death is often personified as being able to administer death to the living without any difficulty (in the figure of the Grim Reaper, for example). But a stroke is also a gentle motion, and even an act of affection. As in line 4, then, death is presented as meek and mild. The caesura in line 12 indicates that the poem is reaching the end of its argument, and sets up the speaker's final challenge to death. In light of all the evidence that has been presented, how can death still "swell" up with pride? This ties in with the first line, too, which instructed death to not be proud.