Night and Moon

In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candlelight. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night.

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

When the footpads quail at the night-bird’s wail, and black dogs bay at the moon, Then is the specters’ holiday—then is the ghosts’ high noon!

Ah, pray make no mistake, We are not shy; We’re very wide awake, The moon and I!

The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright— And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night.

Good Morning—Midnight— I’m coming Home— Day—got tired of Me— How could I—of Him?

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

The day in its hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm.

Here is the charming evening, the criminal’s friend; It comes like an accomplice, with stealthy tread. 7

I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly, My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. Press close bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds—night of the large few stars! Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.

When awful darkness and silence reign Over the great Gromboolian plain,

They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.

Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles.

The silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night.

One if by land, and two if by sea; 1 And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm.

The fate of a nation was riding that night.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.