John Addington Symonds [1840-1893]

NIGHT

Night is the time for rest; How sweet, when labors close, To gather round an aching breast The curtain of repose, Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head Down on our own delightful bed!

Night is the time for dreams; The gay romance of life, When truth that is, and truth that seems, Blend in fantastic strife; Ah! visions, less beguiling far Than waking dreams by daylight are!

Night is the time for toil; To plough the cla.s.sic field, Intent to find the buried spoil Its wealthy furrows yield; Till all is ours that sages taught, That poets sang, or heroes wrought.

Night is the time to weep; To wet with unseen tears Those graves of Memory, where sleep The joys of other years; Hopes, that were Angels at their birth, But perished young, like things of earth.

Night is the time to watch; O'er ocean's dark expanse, To hail the Pleiades, or catch The full moon's earliest glance, That brings into the homesick mind All we have loved and left behind.

Night is the time for care; Brooding on hours misspent, To see the spectre of Despair Come to our lonely tent; Like Brutus, 'midst his slumbering host, Summoned to die by Caesar's ghost.

Night is the time to think; When, from the eye, the soul Takes flight; and, on the utmost brink, Of yonder starry pole Descries beyond the abyss of night The dawn of uncreated light.

Night is the time to pray; Our Saviour oft withdrew To desert mountains far away; So will his followers do,-- Steal from the throng to haunts untrod, And hold communion there with G.o.d.

Night is the time for Death; When all around is peace, Calmly to yield the weary breath, From sin and suffering cease, Think of heaven's bliss, and give the sign To parting friends;--such death be mine!

James Montgomery [1771-1854]

HE MADE THE NIGHT

Vast Chaos, of eld, was G.o.d's dominion, 'Twas His beloved child, His own first born; And He was aged ere the thought of morn Shook the sheer steeps of dim Oblivion.

Then all the works of darkness being done Through countless aeons hopelessly forlorn, Out to the very utmost verge and bourne, G.o.d at the last, reluctant, made the sun.

He loved His darkness still, for it was old; He grieved to see His eldest child take flight; And when His Fiat Lux the death-knell tolled, As the doomed Darkness backward by Him rolled, He s.n.a.t.c.hed a remnant flying into light And strewed it with the stars, and called it Night.

Lloyd Mifflin [1846-1921]

HYMN TO THE NIGHT

I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, The manifold, soft chimes, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,-- From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!

Descend with broad-winged flight, The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882]

NIGHT'S MARDI GRAS

Night is the true democracy. When day Like some great monarch with his train has pa.s.sed.

In regal pomp and splendor to the last, The stars troop forth along the Milky Way, A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray, On heaven's broad boulevard in pageants vast.

And things of earth, the hunted and outcast, Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea, Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start, And specters of dead joy, that shun the light, And impotent regrets and terrors blind, Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night.

Edward J. Wheeler [1859-1922]

DAWN AND DARK

G.o.d with His million cares Went to the left or right, Leaving our world; and the day Grew night.

Back from a sphere He came Over a starry lawn, Looked at our world; and the dark Grew dawn.

Norman Gale [1862-

DAWN

His radiant fingers so adorning Earth that in silent joy she thrills, The ancient day stands every morning Above the flowing eastern hills.

This day the new-born world hath taken Within his mantling arms of white, And sent her forth by fear unshaken To walk among the stars in light.

Risen with laughter unto leaping, His feet untired, undimmed his eyes, The old, old day comes up from sleeping, Fresh as a flower, for new emprise.

The curtain of the night is parted That once again the dawn may tread, In spotless garments, ways uncharted And death a million times is dead.

Slow speechless music robed in splendor The deep sky sings eternally, With childlike wonderment to render Its own unwearied symphony.

Reborn between the great suns spinning Forever where men's prayers ascend, G.o.d's day in love hath its beginning, And the beginning hath no end.