Volume Iii Part 7 (1/2)

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.