Volume Iii Part 7 (2/2)

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.

<script>