University of Virginia Library

A NIGHT REVERIE

Now day is done, and heart and hand may rest!
The calm of night is on the dreaming earth;
The soft winds sleep, and faintly from afar
The night-bird's lone and melancholy cry
Makes the wide silence deeper. Stealthily
The noiseless shadows creep from tree to tree;
All silently the darkling river flows;
All quietly the watching stars look down
On hills and valleys wrapped in deep repose.
O hush, hush, hush! It is the time of prayer—
The time for visions—and the hour for dreams!
Breathe thou no whisper. Let no voice profane
The holy silences of earth and heaven.
Darker and darker still! The mighty dome
Of yon great maple lifts itself on high
In worship of the Infinite. Then a glow
Fainter than that of dawning steals athwart
The lower heavens, and earth, breathless, waits
Moment by moment, till the mountain peaks
Startled from slumber put their glory on—
And lo! the harvest moon!
Thou glorious One!
Shall frail man call thee dead, thou who hast seen
Eons and cycles pass, and centuries
Seek one by one the bourn whence none returns,
And generation after generation fall
As falls the grass before the mower's scythe,
To die and be forgotten? And yet thou,
Fair Queen of Heaven and Ruler of the seas,
Thou art to-night resplendent and unworn
As when the first man saw thee part the clouds,
And all the stars and planets hid abashed
Before thy majesty!
Ah, couldst thou speak,
Couldst thou but tell us what thine eyes have seen,
How would all human annals pale, and fade
To utter nothingness! For thou, O Moon,
Thou hast seen all things! From creation's dawn,
Through night to day, through chaos to the reign
Of peace and order and the sure return
Of season after season, till at length
Earth stood forth radiant in the smile of God,
Thou hast beheld the whole, and watched the growth
Of man from the beginning. Thou hast seen
The cave-men and the dwellers in the rocks;
And them that dwelt in tents and roamed the plains;
And them that built great cities, proudly fair
With domes and temples, and the stately shrines
Wherein strange gods sat throned in majesty.
And thou hast seen them crumble, stone by stone,
And desert sands drift o'er them till the wolf,
The jackal, and the tiger, reared their young
In the vast solitudes. Thou didst look on
While Rhamses and Sesostris builded high
The mighty pyramids that mock at death,
And when great Thothmes bade the Sphinx keep guard
Forever at the Gate of Mysteries.
Thou hast seen empires rise and empires fall,
And states and kingdoms blossom and decay;
Battle and tumult, and the flaming sword
Blazing before lost Eden—and each night
In every age and every clime new graves!
Earth wearies of them—of her graves that lie
On every hilltop, and in every vale—
For everywhere man dies!
But all unchanged
Thou dost behold the tireless years sweep on,
Seedtime and harvest bringing and the sure
Return of autumn with its golden spoil,
The richest freight in God's great argosies.
[OMITTED]
Silent art thou, O Moon! and on thy face
Dwells immemorial calm, the calm of one
Who sees the end from the beginning. Thou—
Thou, and Orion, and Alcyone,
And all the stars that gem the midnight heavens—
Ye know that all is well, that Law is Love,
And life and death alike do the Lawgiver's will.