Night

“ I love to stray at the close of day,
Through groves of linden trees,
When gushing notes from song-birds' throats,
Are vocal in the breeze.
I love the night—the glorious night!
When hearts beat warm and true ”

“ But, oh! the night---the cool, luxurious night,
Which closes round us when the day grows dim,
And the sun sinks from his meridian height,
Behind the ocean's occidental rim!
Clouds, in thin streaks of purple, green and red,
Gather around his setting, and absorb
The last rich rays of glory, that are shed,
In wide profusion, from his failing orb. ”

“ In the still night!
Yes, e'er I sink to rest,
By the fire's dying light,
Thou Lord of Earth and Heaven!
I bless thee, who hast given
Unto life's fainting travellers, the night,
The soft, still, holy night! ”

“ One clear night always is, to common eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon and some stars—a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few castellated, clouds? yet no two nights ever bore more than a family resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. ”

“ Night grants thee the full freedom of the skies,
Nor rudely reprimands thy lifted eye;
With gain, and joy, she bribes thee to be wise. 728
Night opes the noblest scenes, and sheds an awe,
Which gives those venerable scenes full weight,
And deep reception, in th’ intender’d heart;
While light peeps through the darkness, like a spy;
And darkness shows its grandeur by the light.
Nor is the profit greater than the joy,
If human hearts at glorious objects glow,
And admiration can inspire delight. ”

“ But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. ”

“ Night! the abhorred magician Night!
The black astrologer Night!
Night is the world!—I shiver with fright:—
The air is full of evil things,
The coil and glitter of snaky rings,
And, the tremor of vast invisible wings,
That are not heard but felt:
They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek,
They mope and mouth, but they never speak
To utter their awful history.
Oh, when will the darkness break and melt,
Like blocks of ice on a golden reef,
And little by little, as leaf by leaf,
In light and color and form increased,
The rose of morning blooms in the east,—
The old yet ever new mystery! ”

“ The day passed; night wrapped the earth in darkness; bird, beast, and human creatures rested in sleep, save where the solitary lamp burned dimly in the sick-room or the aching heart forbade the eyes to slumber. ”

“ It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous sunset,—the evening star following with silvery lamp the fading day, or the moon showering her pale lustre through the balmy night air, with a fancy that kindles and soars into the heavens before him,—there, that we have all felt the charm of woods and green fields, and solitary boughs waving in the golden sunshine, or darkening in the melancholy beauty of evening shadows. ”

“ The night is dark, and the way is long,
⁠And the clouds are flying fast;
The night-wind sings a dreary song,
⁠And the trees creak in the blast:
The moon is down in the tossing sea,
⁠And the stars shed not a ray ”

“ Rare odours seemed with us to stay,
⁠Faint music reached us from a rill;
We loved the night more than the day.
⁠So lone, so beautiful, and still!
Night is the time for love to spring
⁠Beneath a blue and star-lit sky ”

“ Such a night was it, as you would select for a stroll in company with the being—the one and only being—who, by the mysterious dictation of Nature, has entwined herself around your heart—a night upon which you feel a wayward longing to have white arms entwined around your neck, and bright eyes before your face, with that voluptuous gleaming that can only be felt to perfection under the mystic light of the moon. ”

“ GOOD NIGHT
When the bright lamp is carried in,
The sunless hours again begin;
O'er all without, in field and lane,
The haunted night returns again.
Now we behold the embers flee
About the firelit hearth; and see
Our faces painted as we pass,
Like pictures, on the window-glass.
Must we to bed, indeed? Well then,
Let us arise and go like men,
And face with an undaunted tread
The long, black passage up to bed. ”

“ Then the day dissolves itself into night, and the waxing moon throws its glamour over all. Softly and gently with a feeling of exquisite peace the gathering light transforms the scene into a misty, tender nocturne of mauve and silver. ”

“ The brown night has retired, and the meek-eyed moon, mother of dews, has disappeared: the young day pours in apace; the mountains’ misty tops are swelling on the sight, and brightening in the sun. It is the cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour, to meditation due and sacred song; the air is coloured, the efflux divine turns hovels into palaces, and shoots with gold the rags of beggars. ”

“ Oh! sweet and beautiful is Night, when the silver Moon is high, And countless Stars, like clustering gems, hang sparkling in the sky, While the balmy breath of the summer breeze comes whispering down the glen, And one fond voice alone is heard—oh! Night is lovely then! But when that voice, in feeble moans of sickness and of pain, But mocks the anxious ear that strives to catch its sounds in vain,— When silently we watch the bed, by the taper's flickering light, Where all we love is fading fast—how terrible is Night!! ”

“ When does day now lift up the confines of my dwelling place, when does the night throw open her vastness for me, and send me the stars for company? There is no night in a city. How can I lose myself in the magnificent forest of darkness when night is only a thin scattering of the trees of shadow with barrenness of lights between! ”

“ I thought 'twas night—O such a night!
⁠A night so strangely fair,
When the stars smile down so angel-like,
⁠And through the lucid air
The moonbeams poured in a shining cloud
⁠Like a mass of golden hair!
The shadows of the summer trees
⁠Made columns dark and long
Across the brightly sparkling turf,
⁠And their leaves kept up a song—
A song they'd learned of the dreamy brook
⁠That sung as it flowed along.
Oft have I heard that tune at night,
⁠As it came from the waving wood,
When the breeze was reveling 'mong the boughs,
⁠And stirring the solitude ”

“ Manuscript of "To Night", page 1 Manuscript of "To Night", page 2
Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear--
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of day ”

“ 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. ”

“ Will night ever come?
Yes, it comes at last, as God’s good gifts always come, to refresh and sweeten our lives. The sky flushes with sunset light. Shadows creep up from the east; a cool breeze touches the fevered faces. ”

“ When the evening shadows have fallen on the landscape, the darkness begins to be illuminated here and there by twinkling points of fire, which multiply as the night grows late, till they appear as numerous on earth as the stars in the sky. ”

“ Sleep shakes his wings free of us as the day-star quivers overhead, and the quiet visions of the night pass from the kindly darkness and look out upon the new day through our lustrous eyes. There is no waking to the sombre laws that once set us limits in the world; there is no border 'twixt our dreams and our life: on flows the level tide through waking and through sleeping, through light and shadow, day by day and night by night. ”

“ Night, night, 'tis night!—no dream is this to banish;
The temple and the nightingale are there!
Our love has made them, nevermore to vanish,
Real as yon moon, this wild-rose in your hair.
Night, night, 'tis night!—and love's own star's before us,
Its bright reflection in the starry stream—
Yes, yes, ah, yes! its presence shall watch o'er us,
Night, night, to-night, and every night we dream.
9 Homeward through flowers; she speaks:
Behold the offerings of the common hills! ”

“ The night came, and with it a thousand darknesses fell from the screeching sky. Not a round-eyed creature of the night might pierce an inch of that multiplied gloom. Not a creature dared creep or stand. ”

“ In the blazing heat and dazzling light of noonday he can cover the heavens with the darkness of night. When the sky is one even blue, without assistance of wind or clouds, he can draw rain from a barren heaven. ”

“ As often as I walk through towns by night, I listen to the bodily night-watch with more pleasure than to the spiritual. In the silent, listening night, under the outspread starry heaven, there is something so sublime in the homiletic owl's-song or hoot of the night-watch, that I have a hundred times wished me a horn and six verses. ”

“ Night steals across the all-covering sky, and the waning light sends forth a fresh breath swiftly over the weary world. The flowers stir, their heads seek one another, to prop themselves one against another and sleep. ”

“ A night of murmurings and deepening shadows and freshness, and then, perhaps, of a gentle rain before dawn, and of glimmerings of new day and sweetness of wild flowers and birds’ songs before sunrise. You watch the boles of the great trees grow into stateliness in the twilight, and the night is over. With an arm round your fair one you go to the point where in orange and scarlet the great friend of all the living is lifting himself once more out of the east to show us the way of life. ”

“ And, gazing on the golden place, night took them unaware, And black and windy grew the skies, and black the eddying air So long the night and black the night that fell upon their eyes, They quaked with fear, those mighty hosts; the sun would never rise. ”

“ Only for that reason, then, because Night turns thy servants from thee, didst thou scatter in the wide expanse of space the shining stars, to make known thine omnipotence and thy return, during the periods of thine absence? More heavenly than those twinkling stars seem to us the everlasting eyes which Night has opened within us. Farther they see than the palest of those numberless hosts; not needing light, they fathom the depths of a loving heart, filling a higher space with unspeakable delight. ”

“ Or to roam, the night through, under a sky shining with stars, when the trees have donned their robes of lovely mist, and the creatures which are afraid of man are abroad, the beasts and birds and creeping and flying things that love the dark, hold stillness of the night ”

“ In life, the mind and the circumstance give the true seasons, and regulate the darkness and the light. Of two men standing on the same foot of earth, the one revels in the joyous noon, the other shudders in the solitude of night. For Hope and Fortune, the day-star is ever shining. For Care and Penury, Night changes not with the ticking of the clock, nor with the shadow on the dial. Morning for the heir, night for the houseless, and God’s eye over both. ”

“ Night is really only beautiful so far as it is not night, — that is, for its stars, which are sources of resolute daylight in other spheres, and for its moon, which is daylight’s memory, realized, softened, and refined. ”

“ This destruction and contest ...
Night after night comes the moon
Haughty and perfect;
Night after night the Pleiades sing
And Orion swings his belt across the sky.
Night after night the frost
Crumbles the hard earth. ”

“ Night, especially when it is dark, imparts to scenery a peculiar hue, which completely changes the appearance of the most familiar spots; it gives the smallest object a formidable aspect; all is confounded in one mass, without graduated tints, from which nothing stands out: a spot which is very cheerful in the sunshine becomes gloomy and mournful when enveloped in darkness. ”

“ YEARS and years ago at the very beginning of time, when the world had just been made, there was no night. It was day all the time. No one had ever heard of sunrise or sunset, starlight or moonbeams. There were no night birds, nor night beasts, nor night flowers. ”

“ Why, my love, ’tis night—
’Tis late wait only for the light.
“The wind howls, and the night is dark,
Wait till the dawn, and then we start.”
“Bah! Day is night and night is day—
I dream in the daytime—come away. ”

“ Be it not said, thought, understood —
Then it will be--good night.
To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night. ”

“ Remember me at early day,
Or when the evening shadows haste.
When high the pensive moon appears,
And night, with all her starry train,
Gives rest to human hopes and fears,
Remember I alone complain. ”

“ Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely ”

“ A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and the night is soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching arms, and suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night—the first sigh of the East on my face. ”

“ When night comes—it is night now—they shake from their torpor and become monstrosities crowding closer and closer, stooping to compress the air about my fevered head, crushing into my brain. It is only by ignoring them that I gain relief, so I am writing now in a frenzy to escape them. ”