University of Virginia Library

MIDNIGHT

Under the stars, across whose patient eyes
The wind is brushing flecks of filmy cloud,
I wait for kindly night to hush and calm
The wrangling throng of cares and discontents,
The tangled troubles of a feverish brain.
From far-off church-towers, distance-muffled bells
Are slowly tolling dying midnight's age.
A surging wind sighs through the shadowy trees,
Like surf that breaks on an invisible beach,
And sends a spray of whispers on the air.
I hear the rushing of the wings of Time
Sweep by me. Voices of the murmuring Past
Chant a low dirge above my kneeling heart.
I hear—or is it only the wild wind
Telling its ghostly dreams to the dark trees?—
Amid its pauses, as irresolute
And purposeless it gropes in fitful gusts
Throughout the darkness, sounds of years ago.
Sometimes it seems the rustle of a step,
Which made my heart beat in those years ago—
Which makes me weep to listen for it now;
Sometimes a little foolish whispered phrase,
That you would smile at, if one uttered it—
At which I smiled even as I treasured it;
A warm breath brushing lightly by my cheek—
A low-toned fragment of a sad old song—
I almost think them real, so crazed am I,
Till the shrill wind whirls them in scorn away,
And shrieks its laughter far into the gloom.
Oh, brooding night! thou mockest so bitterly
With thy wild visions and thy weird-winged wind,
That I could well believe thee all unreal,
And our whole world only a phantasy,
And we far-slanted shadows of some life
That walks between our planet and its God.
Oh, stars of Heaven! will ye not comfort me?
Voices of brother-men from long ago,
Come up to me, clasped in the leaves of books,
That tell how they too dreamed the dream of life,
And how, over Earth's flitting phantom forms
Ye shone serene and steadfast as to-night.
Unseal, unseal the secret, for whose hour
Ye wait in hushed and breathless watchfulness
Till God reveal the mystery of His will.
Is it not time to tell us why we live?
So many years we sleep, and wake, and sleep,
While—like some Magian through the mysteries
Leading in fear the blindfold neophyte—
Time leads us dimly on, till angrily
Tired life would turn and throttle its stern guide,
Till he should tell us whither and how long.
But Time gives back no answer, and the stars
Burn on, cold, hushed, and changeless as before,
And we go back baffled and stolidly
To the old, weary, hollow-hearted world;
To the old, endless search for life in death—
The restless, hopeless roaming after rest.