Deep-bosomed night! Not here where down the marge Lift thou the soul to spheres that gave her birth! 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 classic field, Its wealthy furrows yield; Night is the time to weep; To wet with unseen tears Those graves of Memory, where sleep Hopes, that were Angels at their birth, 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 Night is the time for care; Brooding on hours misspent, Like Brutus, 'midst his slumbering host, Night is the time to think; When, from the eye, the soul Takes flight; and, on the utmost brink, Descries beyond the abyss of night The dawn of uncreated light. Night is the time to pray; Our Saviour oft withdrew Steal from the throng to haunts untrod, 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! HE MADE THE NIGHT VAST Chaos, of eld, was God's dominion; Hymn to the Night He loved His darkness still, for it was old; 1327 He grieved to see His eldest child take flight; 1 And strewed it with the stars, and called it Night Lloyd Mifflin [1846 HYMN TO THE NIGHT I HEARD the trailing garments of the Night I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light/ I felt her presence, by its spell of might, The calm, majestic presence of the Night, I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,— O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] NIGHT'S MARDI GRAS NIGHT is the true democracy. When day Like some great monarch with his train has passed, The stars troop forth along the Milky Way, On heaven's broad boulevard in pageants vast. And specters of dead joy, that shun the light, And impotent regrets and terrors blind, Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part DAWN AND DARK GOD with His million cares 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, This day the new-born world hath taken A Wood Song And sent her forth by fear unshaken 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 Reborn between the great suns spinning God's day in love hath its beginning, George B. Logan, Jr. [18 1329 A WOOD SONG Now one and all, you Roses, This very morning closes The Nightingale his song; Each from its olive chamber You Slug-a-beds and Simples, Dears, doff your olive wimples, And listen while you may. Ralph Hodgson [18 |