Mundi et Cordis :: :: University of Virginia Library

Night in the east, like to a shrouded nun,
Comes pacing, slow and melancholy, forth,
With all her mystical austerity,
Dark'ning the hills and billows; but the west
Still holds fair Day, who, like a dying saint,
Gleams with a holy joy in her last hour,
Mantled in gold and azure; and two stars
That on her lessening boundary hang in light,
Seem angels minist'ring to her last breath
Some heavenly consolation. Like death on life,
The pall of Night spreads ever on the track
Of fading Daylight, till the west, as east,
Is darkness. Lo! the stars, Day's funeral lamps,
Hang thick and clustering in the vault of Heaven,
Mirror'd along the ocean, which peals forth
A requiem to the sun; whilst those two orbs
That leant above the death-bed of the Day
Set, as in righteous sorrow, leaving Night
To all the wide inheritance of Heaven.
She wears her milky girdle o'er her robe

Starrily spangled; and upon the cliffs
And complication of the circling hills,
The wave-swept shore, and all the amplitude
Of air and sea, broodeth in starry vastness.