Nightfall

“ At nightfall, when the tropical day drew to its abrupt close, there was usually a lull in the tempest, as if the elements had hushed their ragings so that the cowering earth might view without distraction the terrible spectacle that unfolded itself. ”

“ At nightfall I have wandered amid those graves—a little child, and yet fearless—till the stars have stationed themselves in the blue heavens above me, and the fireflies have flashed their tiny brilliants among the grass, like gentle spirits sent to light up the places of the dead; and thoughts, for which I had no name, would fill my heart with pleasant sadness till I went away, reluctantly, amid feelings that haunted me at night as I listened to the acorns rattling from the oak trees over the roof of our house, and colored my dreams long after the dash of the waterfall had lulled me to sleep. ”

“ Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out, before the clock shall strike bedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not entirely made up of such shadowy materials, as have busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies, that the things without him will seem as unreal as those within.
When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly buttoning my shaggy overcoat, and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome of which immediately resounds with the heavy drumming of the invisible rain-drops. ”

“ Thro' the thick air; as cloath'd in cloudy storm,
Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky;
And, soon descending, to the long dark night,⁠50
Wide-shading all, the prostrate world resigns.
Nor is the night unwish'd; while vital heat,
Light, life, and joy, the dubious day forsake.
Mean-time, in fable cincture, shadows vast,
Deep-ting'd and damp, and congregated clouds,⁠55
And all the vapoury turbulence of heaven
Involve the face of things. ”

“ Where all the world by frozen field and wood, Chilled into numbness, sleeps.
Here dwell no pallid spirits of the day, But out across the icy, desolate dream, The world of night is all storm-blown one way, In a loud, gusty gleam. [Pg 38]
Soon, soon from arctic cave and bastion strong, With elves of frost and wrinkled, sleep-eyed ghosts, Out of the north with hornings loud and long, Will come the grim storm-hosts.
And faster and faster on the shadowy air, Across the phantom glimmerings of the moon, Will fold the silences, far, chilled and bare, In one white, mantling swoon ”

“ When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay the moon,
Then is the spectre's holiday—then is the ghosts' high noon!
As the sob of the breeze sweeps over the trees, and the mists lie low on the fen,
From grey tomb-stones are gathered the bones that once were women and men,
And away they go, with a mop and a mow, to the revel that ends too soon,
For cockcrow limits our holiday—the dead of the night's high noon! ”

“ The night is dying. Her rich darks and whites grow pallid. Each moment a layer of darkness peels off. The sky turns blue before one knows it: the rocks grow brown: there is blue in the crevasses, and green upon the swards—all low-toned yet distinct. Faint puffs of warm air come, we know not whence, touch our faces, and are gone. The lantern has been extinguished; we stride out more freely; the day awakens within us also. ”

“ Your splendid eyes, so full of clouds, wherein a shadow tries
To overcome the flame that melts into the world of grey,
As coming suns dissolve the dark that veils the edge of day.
Cool drifts the air at dawn of day, cool lies the sleeping dew,
But all my heart is burning, for it woke from dreams of you;
And O! these longing eyes of mine look out and only see
A dying night, a waking day, and calm on all but me. ”

“ BIRD RAPTURES. The sunrise wakes the lark to sing, The moonrise wakes the nightingale. Come darkness, moonrise, every thing That is so silent, sweet, and pale: Come, so ye wake the nightingale. Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon, Make haste to wake the nightingale: Let silence set the world in tune [264] To hearken to that wordless tale Which warbles from the nightingale O herald skylark, stay thy flight One moment, for a nightingale Floods us with sorrow and delight. To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail; Leave us to-night the nightingale. ”

“ It was such a night as comes in summer after perfect weather, frightening in its heat, and silence, which was broken by the distant thunder travelling low along the ground like the muttering of all dark places on the earth—such a night as seems, by very breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to justify man's cowardice. ”

“ The daylight is dying
Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
In silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
Where shadows are deep,
They pass to its bondage --
The kingdom of sleep.
And watched in their sleeping
By stars in the height,
They rest in your keeping,
O wonderful night. ”

“ With the darkness came the stars, leaping into the black arch of heaven, great and of a number beyond all counting; the night-wind turned the heat of the day to sudden coolness, sweeping softly among the ruins. The mounds of earth, softened in outline by the darkness, loomed vast and shadowlike, melting into the sombre mystery of the night. ”

“ Thus the moon seems to repose on a lofty cloud, when the storm has been lulled to rest, and to gaze sadly down upon the night, but without passion; she hears the infinite silence of the forest, like the silence of the tomb, while from the trees big heavy teardrops fall noiselessly upon the dead leaves which strew the ground beneath. ”

“ Seems blown mist in the lightning’s glare:
Cool, rainy odors drench the air;
Night speaks above; the angry smile
Of storm within her stare.
The way that I shall take to-night
Is through the wood whose branches fill
The road with double darkness, till,
Between the boughs, a window’s light
Shines out upon the hill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days. The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent. The doors of night are closed. We go our ways. VII. The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light. The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east: And lights wink out through the windows, one by one. A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night. Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun. And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams, The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street, And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain. ”

“ If it is night, the moon should be introduced; and if it is day, the sun—and so on?"
"Of course; and, if the circumstances are of a pleasing nature, you must leave horrors and terrors on your pallette; change gusts into zephyrs, snow into roses and violets, and the weathercocks into golden vanes glittering in the sunshine."
"I understand."
"You want to color a popular outbreak, do you not?"
"Yes."
"Then you should introduce a tempest howling, the waves roaring, the lightning flashing, and discord raging in the air as well as on the earth." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Rain falls in torrents, as if the skies were coming down to unite with the sea. When the lightning ceases for a moment, the night seems to add its own darkness to that of the storm; then comes the flash, rending the darkness asunder, and lighting up all with a glare. ”

“ Morning came, the flaming arch of the Fire-Cloud sank lower and lower in the heavens until it stretched a broad band of lurid light round the western horizon, and an unclouded sun brought the last dawn but one that the terror-maddened myriads of earth would ever see. ”

“ On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars,
In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness,
But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew. ”

“ In a few seconds it has the appearance of the sky upon a dark night; but, as the eye becomes accustomed to the darkness, small spots are seen like stars; and they keep increasing till the vaulted roof has the appearance of a lovely star-light night. ”

“ A praying for the blackness, A longing for the night, For each is doomed forever By a horror of the light; [Pg 102] And far in the heart of midnight, Where their shadowy flight is hurled, They feel with pain the dawning That creeps in round the world.
Under the northern midnight, The white, glint ice upon, They hasten, still they hasten, With their horror of the dawn; Forever and forever, Into the night away They hasten, still they hasten Unto the judgment day.
[Pg 103]
BELATED.
The year drifts sadly back this way, With Autumn’s grief and pain ”

“ Dull and heavy glide on the hours of night; silence like that of the prairie rests for a while on and around the city, save the howl of some watchful dog and the far-off sound of a tinkling bell. A city at night, wrapped in the curtains darkness throws around it, is like a vast sepulchre, and visited alike with ghosts from the spirit-world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Loud & more loud the living music floats upon the air
Faint & more faint the daylight wanes. The wheels of turning darkness
Began in solemn revolutions. Earth convulsd with rending pangs
Rockd to & fro & cried sore at the groans of Enitharmon
10 Still the faint harps & silver voices calm the weary couch
But from the caves of deepest night ascending in clouds of mist
The winter spread his wide black wings across from pole to pole
Grim frost beneath & terrible snow linkd in a marriage chain
Began a dismal dance. ”

“ At sunset, on such a day, as evening calmness settles down, weird mountain shadows begin to move across the dimly-lighted glens; and when darkness has fallen, there is a mystic stillness, broken only by the ceaseless throbbing of the sea-waves, the flow of brooks, and the voices of the night. ”

“ As the last hours of night shorten in the lovely season of Spring, the deep darkness which envelopes the earth’s surface dissipates little by little and objects become visible as the delicate light of dawn gradually invades the east. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He stood for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group in the choir. Presently he became conscious of the words sung:
“A thousand ages in Thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun. “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly, forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day.” ”

“ They have their hour, and pass away. Often the clouds roll on to some distant bourn, leaving the sky clear, the sun smiling brighter than ever, the blades of grass gemmed with the diamond drops, the earth all fresh, and the birds all singing. But there are other times, when, although the fierceness of the tempest is over, the streaming deluge suspended, the torch of the lightning quenched, and the angry voice of the thunder hushed, a heavy boding cloud remains behind, hiding the brightness of the face of heaven, and threatening fresh storms to come. ”

“ All day the air is heavy and still; the sky the colour of iron.
Nights are heavy and still as the days, and people turn wearily from the glow in the east at dawn; but the days go on, for months, one after the other, hot, breathless, of dazzling radiance, or wrapped in the red haze of a dust storm. ”

“ Night is falling, and the shadows of the woods thicken into solid gloom that teems with mysterious horrors, which stretch their intangible claws through the darkness to chill the backs of the timid with an icy touch, and the silence is terrible with unuttered howlings of imaginary beasts. ”

“ Its sparks, having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark descends, pours over the outlines of houses and towers; bleak hillsides soften and fall in. But though they are gone, the night is full of them; robbed of colour, blank of windows, they exist more ponderously, give out what the frank daylight fails to transmit―the trouble and suspense of things conglomerated there in the darkness ”

“ Sleep-druggèd river that carries the wreckage of cities out sea-ward.
Slowly the fingers of dawn-light
Snuff out the candles that yearned to those Gods of delirium,
Sleep-huge as shadows grimacing
From niches made black with the smoke of a fire-spangled passion.
Smoothly the wild hair of darkness
Is plaited for rest, and the faces of visions are covered with sleep veils. ”