 | Areytos or songs and ballads of the South |  |
59
NIGHT SCENE.—HOW STILL IS NATURE NOW!
I.
How still is Nature now,How quiet all her sleep!
The dews are on her brow,
And all her dreams are deep;
Closed darkly is her eye,
Her breathings soft and low,
As if the spirit, once so high,
In challenge of the earth and sky,
Would cease to flow.
And out on the black waste of ocean,
We hear no commotion:
And the billows that lazily break on the shore
Have a life, but no roar:
And the winds, that were chafing all day with the waves,
Are subdued into slaves,
That crouch, and but murmur and wait,
As the night, trailing cloud robes, marches on in her state!
II.
Above the expanse of dark,That forms her sombre pall,
One star, with glowing spark,
Looks loving out o'er all;
There spreads a tract of fleece,
White, in the dusky west:
Like some fair Isle of Peace,
That, when the tempest cease,
Smiles out on ocean's breast!
60
Found in ancient romances:
Of strange dwarfish races, of delicate graces,
That peopled such places—
To be seen when the sun was at setting,
On the sands pirouetting;
And who sped, on the star-beam, from islet to sea,
With frolicsome pinion, fantastic as free!
III.
A murmur from the sea,A faint and dying strain,
Takes, as the night-winds flee,
Their parting moan again;
And the twin voices link
Their pinions for the shore,
Flutter with plaining on its brink,
Then on the sands subside, and sink
To sleep once more!
And they bury white heads in black pillows,
Those great rolling billows;
And the vast world of sea, in her bosom,
Doth lovingly close 'em;
While her murmur of lullaby, soft as the mother's,
Their deep sobbing smothers;
And the white fleecy isle, that we look'd on erewhile
In the west, passes east, and broods o'er with a smile.
IV.
Westward, two rivers wind,Sweetly yielding to the deep;
In one embrace they find
The silvery sway of sleep:
61
Ascends a spell, whose chain
Subdues their murmurous play
Of sounds, which melt away,
As echoes from the plain;
And the skiff that late glided rejoicing,
With lute-music and mellowest voicing
Now feels the same magic dominion,
And floats, but with folded-up pinion;
The peace of the sky and the ocean
Hath hush'd even rapture's emotion,
And the hearts that were stirr'd at each musical word,
Now sleep on their wings as a satisfied bird.
| Areytos or songs and ballads of the South | |