Night and Moon

The book of moonlight is not written yet.

And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandaled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

Sunset and evening star,

 

Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone.

 

Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

And when night

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;

 

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark.

 

A single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the objects than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smil’d!

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright.

Vex’d with mirth the drowsy ear of night.

About, about, in reel and rout The death fires danced at night.

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was specter-gray, And Winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

Rest at pale evening… A tall slim tree… Night coming tenderly Black like me.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

Hide me from day’s garish eye.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Oft, in the stilly night,