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Thomas Cole's poetry

the collected poems of America's foremost painter of the Hudson River School reflecting his feelings for nature and the romantic spirit of the Nineteenth Century

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83. Lines Suggested by a Voyage up the Hudson on a Moonlight Night
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174

83.
Lines Suggested by a Voyage up the Hudson on a Moonlight Night

Midnight the hour when silence sleeps
When o'er dim vales and craggy steeps
The viewless spirits of the sky
Pour from their starry urns on high
The pearly dew; each bud and flower
Moistens its bosom in the shower
And every fay his goblet fills
With nectar which the heaven distils—
Hudson! The breeze has ceased to press
Thy wave! And on its placidness
The moonbeams are caress'd, and lie
Bright sleeping undisturbedly
Ever should loveliness recline
On couch as beautiful as thine—
From out thy depths the mountains rise
And lift their shadows to the skies—
In silent awfulness they tower
Like spectres that by magic power
Are call'd from some vast black abyss
Cav'd in earth's bosom bottomless,
Whilst round each huge brow rough and sear
The moonlight trembles as in fear.
Yon moonlit bark beneath the hill
Hath not a breeze its sail to fill
But gently on the ebbing flood
It glides past mountain rock and wood
'Tis like yon cloud that moves on high
Alone—no other cloud is nigh.
The winds are still but on it springs

175

Borne by its own aerial wings—
I love this stilly hour of night
For fancy's visions are more bright
Than in the troubled glare of day
With all its pomp and proud display—
Midnight hath loosed the chain that bound
The spirit to its earthly round—
TC