The Night Thoughts

“ Night is fair virtue’s immemorial friend;
The conscious moon, through every distant age,
Has held a lamp to wisdom, and let fall,
On contemplation’s eye, her purging ray. 180
The famed Athenian, [17] he who woo’d from heaven
Philosophy the fair, to dwell with men,
And form their manners, not inflame their pride,
While o’er his head, as fearful to molest
His labouring mind, the stars in silence slide,
And seem all gazing on their future guest,
See him soliciting his ardent suit
In private audience: all the live-long night,
Rigid in thought, and motionless, he stands ”

“ How slowly and wearily night passes when a sense of impending evil overpowers sleep, and renders every faculty sharply sensible to sounds and impressions otherwise of ordinary occurrence,—when a thousand vague phantasies flit before the imagination hardly more definite than the keenly-painful thoughts they awaken! ”

“ You have sins lurking in your flesh, crimes piled up in your brain, a sombre mood inhabiting your heart. Everything can be confessed and laid bare. The night is all-comprehending. Night-time is different from the stiffly starched daytime with its color and form to distract man from his intimate verity. You can venture upon the wildest thoughts, expand to your uttermost limits, forget your own existence, and discard all past gestures. ”

“ Night suggests the vastness of creation, as day can never do; and darkness, silence, the absence of human fellowship, and the suspension of human activity, interests, and occupations, leave us a less disturbed opportunity of meditating on our Creator's inconceivable power. The day and the day's beauty make me feel as if God were very near me; the night and the night's beauty, as if I were very far off from Him.
But, dear Harriet, do not, I entreat you, challenge me to put into words those thoughts which, in us all, must be unutterable. ”

“ It is a single maze, though we traverse it in opposite moods, and distinct threads conduct us; for when the most dire events have assumed their punctiform places in the history of our lives, where they will stand eternally, what are they but absurd episodes in a once tormenting dream? And when our despised night-dreams are regarded and respected as they deserve to be (since all their troubles are actual and all their tints evident) , do they prove more arbitrary or less significant than our waking thoughts, or than those more studious daylight fictions which we call history or philosophy? ”

“ Made mad with inner ire.
III
Who cries! The night is black
As death and not as night;
The world is fallen back
To nothing; sound and light
And moon and stars and skies,
Thunder and lightning—all
Gone, gone! Not even cries
The cricket in the hall,
The dog without. At last
The end of all the hours.
Was that a Spirit pass’d
Between the slamming doors?
We slept not yet we wake!
Was it a voice that cried,
‘Awake, ye sleepless; wake,
Ye deathless who have died’?
No voice. No light, no sound.
It was the fancy that
At midnight makes rebound
Of thoughts we labour at
At mid-day. ”

“ Too glorious to be gazed on in his sphere:
That, mind immortal loves immortal aims: 1010
That, boundless mind affects a boundless space:
That vast surveys, and the sublime of things,
The soul assimilate, and make her great:
That, therefore, heaven her glories, as a fund
Of inspiration, thus spreads out to man.
Such are their doctrines; such the Night inspired.
And what more true? what truth of greater weight?
The soul of man was made to walk the skies ”

“ The argument of the “Night Thoughts” may be stated in general to be as follows:—It is to shew the vanity of man as mortal; to inculcate the lowness, misery, and madness of the sensual life; to prove the superiority of the Christian to the man of the world, both in life and in death, and the worthlessness of merely human friendship; to argue, from nature and reason, the truth of man’s immortality; to shew the reasonableness of religion, and to inculcate the necessity of a divine revelation, and of a propitiatory sacrifice. ”

“ It is a cheerless hour for you both when the lamp of love has gone out and the fire of affection is not yet lit, and you have to grope about in the cold, raw dawn of life to kindle it. God grant it catches light before the day is too far spent. Many sit shivering by the dead coals till night come. ”

“ Meteor-like, it blazes for a moment and lights with its glory the whole world beneath. Then the night of our sordid commonplace life closes in around it, and the burned-out case, falling back to earth, lies useless and uncared for, slowly smoldering into ashes. ”

“ Seems it not then enough, to say, Lorenzo!
To man abandon’d, “Hast thou seen the skies?”
And yet, so thwarted Nature’s kind design 940
By daring man, he makes her sacred awe
(That guard from ill) his shelter, his temptation
To more than common guilt, and quite inverts
Celestial art’s intent. The trembling stars
See crimes gigantic, stalking through the gloom
With front erect, that hide their head by day,
And making night still darker by their deeds. ”

“ Night gives a black look to everything, whatever it may be. This is why our thoughts, just before we go to sleep, or as we lie awake through the hours of the night, are usually such confusions and perversions of facts as dreams themselves ”

“ Our nature such, ill choice ensures ill fate;
And hell had been, though there had been no God.
Dost thou not know, my new astronomer! 2010
Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man?
Man, turning from his God, brings endless night;
Where thou canst read no morals, find no friend,
Amend no manners, and expect no peace.
How deep the darkness! and the groan, how loud!
And far, how far, from lambent are the flames!—
Such is Lorenzo’s purchase! such his praise!
The proud, the politic, Lorenzo’s praise!
Though in his ear, and levell’d at his heart,
I’ve half read o’er the volume of the skies. ”

“ Till darken’d reason lay quite clouded o’er 160
With soft conceit of endless comfort here,
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!
Night-visions may befriend (as sung above) :
Our waking dreams are fatal. ”

“ To reach the distant skies, and triumph there
On thrones, which shall not mourn their masters changed,
Though we from earth; ethereal, they that fell.
Such veneration due, O man, to man.
Who venerate themselves, the world despise.
For what, gay friend! is this escutcheon’d world,
Which hangs out death in one eternal night?
A night, that glooms us in the noontide ray,
And wraps our thought, at banquets, in the shroud.
Life’s little stage is a small eminence, 360
Inch-high the grave above; that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude: we gaze around ”

“ But here we must note that although, at the beginning, when this spiritual night commences, this enkindling of love is not felt, because this fire of love has not begun to take a hold, God gives the soul, in place of it, an estimative love of Himself so great that, as we have said, the greatest sufferings and trials of which it is conscious in this night are the anguished thoughts that it [195] has lost God and the fears that He has abandoned it. ”

“ Who rounded in his palm these spacious orbs?
Who bowl’d them flaming through the dark profound,
Numerous as glittering gems of morning dew, 1280
Or sparks from populous cities in a blaze,
And set the bosom of old Night on fire? ”

“ My song the midnight raven has outwing’d,
And shot, ambitious of unbounded scenes, 2415
Beyond the flaming limits of the world,
Her gloomy flight. But what avails the flight
Of fancy, when our hearts remain below?
Virtue abounds in flatterers, and foes;
’Tis pride, to praise her; penance, to perform.
To more than words, to more than worth of tongue,
Lorenzo! rise, at this auspicious hour;
An hour, when Heaven’s most intimate with man;
When, like a fallen star, the ray divine
Glides swift into the bosom of the just ”

“ sure as night follows day,
Death treads in pleasure’s footsteps round the world, 864
When pleasure treads the paths, which reason shuns. ”

“ The stars—as we term the myriad other worlds that are rushing down beside us through the eternal silence—were put into the heavens to make the sky look interesting for us at night; and the moon with its dark mysteries and ever-hidden face is an arrangement for us to flirt under. ”

“ Young, we need scarcely say, finds in the nocturnal heavens lessons neither of Atheism nor of Superstition, but of Religion, and reads in the face of Old Night her divine origin, the witness she bears to the existence of God, her dependence upon her Author, and her subordination to His purposes. ”

“ The reader will notice how, in this noble passage, the individual sentences and points are all subordinated to the main purpose of the poet, and being subjected to the general stress of the strain, do not detract from, but add to, its musical unity.
The comparative place of the poem, and the genius of the writer, are two subjects which are closely connected, and indeed slide into each other. The “Night Thoughts” must not be named, in interest, finish, sustained sublimity, and artistic completeness, with the “Iliad,” the “Divina Commedia,” or the “Paradise Lost.” ”

“ Pulls off the veil from virtue’s rising charms;
Detects temptation in a thousand lies.
Truth bids me look on men, as autumn leaves,
And all they bleed for, as the summer’s dust,
Driven by the whirlwind: lighted by her beams,
I widen my horizon, gain new powers,
See things invisible, feel things remote, 340
Am present with futurities; think nought
To man so foreign, as the joys possess’d;
Nought so much his, as those beyond the grave.
No folly keeps its colour in her sight;
Pale worldly wisdom loses all her charms ”

“ Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threatens his bloody stage: by the clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is 't night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb, ⁠9
When living light should kiss it? ”

“ This midnight sentinel, with clarion shrill
(Emblem of that which shall awake the dead) ,
Rouse souls from slumber, into thoughts of heaven.
Shall I too weep? Where then is fortitude?
And, fortitude abandon’d, where is man?
I know the terms on which he sees the light;
He that is born, is listed; life is war;
Eternal war with woe. Who bears it best, 10
Deserves it least.—On other themes I’ll dwell.
Lorenzo! let me turn my thoughts on thee,
And thine, on themes may profit ”

“ This marvellous poem was all composed either at night, or when riding on horseback—an exercise, by the way, which gives a sense of mastery and confidence, stirs the blood, elevates the animal spirits, and has been felt by many to be eminently favourable to thought and mental composition. It inspired, we know, such men as Burns, Byron, Shelley, and Delta. We love to think of Young riding through the green lanes of his parish, and cooing out to himself his plaintive minstrelsies. ”

“ They hear the bell of midnight toll,
And shiver in their flesh and soul;
They lie on hard, cold wood or stone,
Iron, and ache in every bone;
They hate the night: they see no eyes
Of loved ones in the starlit skies. ”

“ The night, during which all the troublesome, battering appeals of the day are suspended, in which everything fades from the eye, leaving it free to fix itself upon the only reality, love,—the night is fosterer and patroness of truth. ”

“ This mist of nocturnal mystery is the scattered, the fugitive, the crumbling, the fatal; one feels earth no longer, one feels the other reality.
In the shadow, infinite and indefinite, lives something or some one; but that which lives there forms part of our death. After our earthly passage, when that shadow shall be light for us, the life which is beyond our life shall seize us. Meanwhile it appears to touch and try us. Obscurity is a pressure. Night is, as it were, a hand placed on our soul. ”

“ Of virtuous praise. Death’s subtle seed within
(Sly, treacherous miner!) , working in the dark,
Smiled at thy well-concerted scheme, and beckon’d
The worm to riot on that rose so red,
Unfaded ere it fell; one moment’s prey! 360
Man’s foresight is conditionally wise;
Lorenzo! [4] wisdom into folly turns
Oft, the first instant, its idea fair
To labouring thought is born. How dim our eye!
The present moment terminates our sight;
Clouds thick as those on doomsday, drown the next;
We penetrate, we prophesy in vain.
Time is dealt out by particles ”

“ The vacant evening, the remembrances of the childish joys of Christmas, the starry heaven, looking down from overhead, which magically illuminates all dark wishes of man, like flowers in the night,—these and the silence surcharged and burdened his forlorn soul, and he pressed the only hand which human kind at this moment extended to him. ”

“ Wheeling and darting, withdrawn, and sudden again outsped—
No one knew why—but I knew darkness then,
And saw the stars that hung so still; but when
I lay abed the old starless dark came back again.
Night is not night without the stars and moon. ”

“ We are far from contending that Young has exhausted the poetry of the theme. Since his time the telescopes of Herschell and Lord Rosse have been turned to the skies, and have greatly extended the size and splendour of that vast midnight Apparition—the starry scheme. Our recent poets have availed themselves of these discoveries, as witness the eloquent rhapsodies about the stars by Bailey, A. Smith, and Bigg. And there is even yet room for another great poem on the subject, entitled “Night,” were the author come. ”

“ It narrows our limit of vision, and at the same time hurries us and worries us with our own tasks which we will not take cheerfully, and the tasks of others which are done so ill. Night tells not only of repose on earth, but of life in that far heaven where every star is a thing of motion and a creation full of mystery. ”