NIGHT

Teach me your mood, O patient stars,
Who climb each night the ancient sky,
Leaving on space no shade, no scars,

No trace of age, no fear to die.

The wonder of an ancient awe
Takes hold upon him when he sees
In the cold autumn dusk arise
Orion and the Pleiades;

Emerson

Or when along the southern rim
Of the mysterious summer night
He marks, above the sleeping world,
Antares with his scarlet light.

Bliss Carman

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.— Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man: and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learned the language of another world.

Byron

NIGHT

T

A CLEAR MIDNIGHT

HIS is thy hour, O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death, and the stars.

TO NIGHT

Walt Whitman

SWIFT

I

WIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!

II

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long sought!

III

When I arose and saw the dawn,
I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.

IV

Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? - And I replied,
No, not thee!

V

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon -

Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belovèd Night—
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

NIGHT

M

'YSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent
knew

Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely Frame,
This glorious canopy of Light and Blue?

Yet, 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting Flame, Hesperus, with the Host of Heaven, came, And lo! Creation widened on Man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed

Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless Orbs thou mad'st us blind!

Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life? Joseph Blanco White

THE SPACIOUS FIRMAMENT ON HIGH

HE spacious firmament on high,

TH

And all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.

Th' unwearied Sun from day to day,
Does his Creator's power display,

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The Moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening Earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

Whilst all the stars that round her burn,

And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,

And spread the truth from pole to pole.