Night and Moon

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

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

So, while the light fails

Slowly, silently, now the moon

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

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

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move.

I see, in evening air, How slowly dark comes down on what we do.

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

The New York dawn has four columns of mud and a hurricane of black doves that paddle in putrescent waters.

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.

Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat, but to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending After the dark dove with the flickering tongue Had passed below the horizon of his homing.

The book of moonlight is not written yet.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon.

The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song After great cathedral gong.

At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit.

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

Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by. Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about?