Night and Moon

Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown His cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note.

I must become a borrower of the night For a dark hour or twain.

Now o’er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings.

The moon is down.

There’s husbandry in heaven; Their candles are all out.

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, “Hold, hold!”

It is the very error of the moon; She comes more near the earth than she was wont, And makes men mad.

’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.

The glowworm shows the matin to be near, And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

In the dead vast and middle of the night.

It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine.

The deep of night is crept upon our talk, And nature must obey necessity.

The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fix’d sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other’s watch: Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face: Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents The armorers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation.

These blessed candles of the night.

This night methinks is but the daylight sick.

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops.

The lark, the herald of the morn.

Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops— Juliet: O! swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve; Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.

Night and silence! who is here? Weeds of Athens he doth wear.

The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders At our quaint spirits.

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.