University of Virginia Library

NIGHT.

A thousand thousand worlds break forth in light,
Till the mid-heavens seem streaming on our sight—
More—more than the mid-heavens—there seems to dwell,
Deep midst their splendours inaccessible,
A presence and a power!—divine!—supreme!
And yet—not so—'tis but a cheating dream!
'Tis but the shadow of a presence there,
Reflected back from the out-stretched soul! They bear,
Even in the might of their refulgent hour,
But the dread impress of invisible power.
Beautiful, Night, thou art! High mysteries breathe
Through all thy conquering silence—deep as death;
High mysteries that seem portion still and part
Of the high nature throbbing through the heart!
Thy sky seems wearing, midst its depths of blue,
The intense transparence of the sapphire's hue!
The piercing sweetness of Eolian sighs,
The burning darkness of the hyacinth's dyes,
Dwells on thy thrilling air! while whisperings low
Fitfully through thine awful regions flow!
Not now art thou by tempests lashed and tossed,
But in thine own unbounded beauty lost!
O, how unbounded! Not a breath—a ray,
But floats through starry endlessness away!
I've watched thee, when along the shaken shores
Thy haughty presence like a deluge pours!
When kingly storms met ye with furious force,
And savage winds raved hurriedly and hoarse—
When with the hollow-dashing breakers' din
The gathered surge, the hissing surf chimed in,
And the fierce waters leaped and roared around,
As scorning every chain, and every bound!
When the deep heaved and rushed, as though 'twould rock,
With every thundering burst and conquering shock,
The mighty heavens themselves on its dread waves—
Those shadowy, incommunicative graves
Of countless thousands, whose strewn ashes stir
Within their loud and jubilant sepulchre!—
But now, the lovely difference!—'tis an hour
When thoughts—dreams—prayers, assert a sevenfold power,
The stars, like pageant-visions, float and gleam,
And seem to bear on every quivering beam
A load of life-like beauty—a rich store
Of strange, magnificently-wondrous lore!
As from each ray, all tremulously gleaming,
The poetry of eternity was streaming!
Pressing our souls, a weight of breathless light
Comes silent down, unfathomably bright!
Still there pass breezy whispers through the air,
So sweet—so faint—as dying love were there;
Till memory—passion—conscience, swell the tone,
And trumpet-like peals each mysterious moan.
O, 'tis a strong hour this!—the mind soars high,
To which the winds are laggards in the sky.
The all-o'ersweeping mind that rends its way
Beyond the chartered bounds of night and day!
Through the awed soul, heaven—heaven now seems to rush,
Yet not consumed, as sank the burning bush
Of old, but hallowed, chastened, glorified,
And melted from its pinnacle of pride!—
That soul, in rapt communion filled and fired,
Is thrillingly awakened and inspired!
Still, still the old religious night o'erpowers
With holiest thoughts the dark stream of her hours,
As she would fain man's questioning spirit draw
O'er her abyss of beauty and of awe.
But, O, dread, fearful being that thou art!
Man of the dark unfathomable heart,
How often dost thou turn in scorn away,
Impatient of thy better nature's sway!
Thou'st pierced the secrets, wonderful and old,
Of nature, and her chasmy page unrolled;
Sounded creation's depths,—thy own strong will
The agent of thy grand achievements still!
But what, save Heaven's omnipotence, can sound
Thy spirit's sea of darkening depths profound?
Yet, through thy vast existence there is nought
So fearfully distracting to the thought
As thy soul's deadness to its own true life—
Its strenuous eagerness in each vain strife
For earth's vain triumphs! its harsh disrespect
Of heavenly things! Alas, its cold neglect!
Are nature's threatenings—teachings—promptings, vain?
Still hopelessly beleaguering heart and brain!
Shall narrow self be ignobly opposed
To worlds developed and to heavens disclosed?
Shall nought, or touch, or pierce that stony heart,
In dreadful independence reared apart?
Shall nought arouse, convince that slumbering mind,
In the uncommunicativeness enshrined
Of self-sufficing, deaf, and reckless pride,
With all presumption's impious host allied!—
Must all be vain?—the unutterable all
Which should the stubbornest thought enchain—enthrall!
The Eternity's sublime attesting signs—
The Immensity's ten thousand thousand shrines,
Setting all space on fire! Those worlds whose strife
Harmonious, floods the firmaments with life!
Nature's most rich revealings! pure and high,
And blazoned forth through the earth, and air, and sky!
While, O, through worlds and wastes of worlds, through space,
Through all—that all extension doth embrace!
The heights, the depths, the expanses, and the abysses,
The ocean-gulphs, and chaos-wildernesses!—
Through calm and storm, the earth-wakening thundercrash!
The arrowy terrors of the lightning's flash!—
Through morning's rich luxuriance of delight—
Through midnight-heavens—through all the crush of night!—
Through every moment of out-meted time,
Which strikes its own death-knell in every chime!
(Time! that still flies!—that hath for ever fled!
As from that awful contact, deep and dread)—
Through every element that hath confessed
The unerring laws, fulfilled the imposed behest—
Through every sun that takes its glorying way,
Scattering profuse magnificence of day—
Through every beam that star or sun emits—
Through all the infinite of infinites—
The Godhead breathes! the eternal Godhead streams!
The Almighty presence pours! and clouds, and beams—
Thunders and lightnings—noon and midnight, still
Beneath the burthening Omnipresence thrill!
Omnipotence—Omnipotence proclaims
Itself through all!—O! shame of burning shames!
Shall we, in obdurate pride, refuse to hear
The Almighty voice, that thrills each echoing sphere?—
Thundering through long-resounding worlds on high,
Till all are love, and strength, and harmony—
Thundering, to melt away from those proud thrones,
Into the murmurous hush of tenderest tones—
Sunk to that still small voice, whose whisperings low,
Poured in faint cadence, tremulously flow,
When through the human breast its breath is stealing,
Tenderly—nay—imploringly appealing!
As if thus softened from a pitying fear
Of startling man's awed soul!—and shall that soul not hear?
And shall the love of Heaven, a wounded love
For ever be? The Heaven of Heavens above
Opened their dazzling gates of glory wide,
(While wonder-stricken angels turned aside,
Bowed with amazement!) for the atoner's train!
His train! Ah! he who doth omnific reign
O'er worlds by myriads, on the eternal throne,
Went forth—to grief, scorn, anguish, death—alone!
And vain! all vain! That more than mightiest love
Streamed through the astonished Heaven of Heavens above,
But to be lost in man's disdainlful heart—
That doth not shrink nor quail—that doth not start!
Untouched by all that should to each pierced thought
Bring adoration, even to anguish wrought!
Alas! shall no compunctious pang be brought—
Alas! shall no spark from the Almighty Sun
Kindle the soul from doom and darkness won?
No gracious breathings of the Almighty Dove—
Whose breathings all are mercy, pardon, love—
Melt the stern spirit from its hardened pride,—
Nor from the paths of sin triumphant guide?
Must there be truth in such abhorrent tale?
O, stars! ere ye're absolved, wane, dim and pale—
To undiscoverable depths retire!
Turn from this guilt-stained earth your looks of fire,
Or, in o'erwhelming mountainous, conspiring,
Rend through the scattered elements expiring
Your dread avenging path! Expel—efface
The world of death from the abyss of space!
Your glory, indestructible—divine,
Withdraw from this contaminated shrine!
Your harmony, multitudinous and deep,
Waste not upon this cold world's deafened sleep!
Leave the bared midnight heavens like some rent scroll,
In dread similitude of man's dimmed soul!—
Even to the blackness of their darkness dire.—
Vainly they've rolled their breathless seas of fire!
Vainly, o'er-charactered with truths sublime,
Given their bright banners to the storm of time!
O, vainly have they wielded, night on night,
Worlds linked with worlds—spheres joined with spheres of light—
Stupendous chain-shot, 'gainst man's stubborn brain,
In luxury of endeavour, vain—all vain!
Let it not be—at least one heart awake!
Let mine its clayey trammels from it shake!
Let life be love!—even love that never dies,
Borne o'er earth's glooms, temptations, agonies!
(As the sea-eagle o'er the sweeping main,
That soars beyond the reach of speck or stain,)
To where the passion-tempests cease from strife,
And all is bound in full deep burning life!—
Beautiful, Night, thou art!—most beautiful
When thy adoring stillness seems to lull
The spirit! yet but breathes intenser power
Through every thought, born in thy solemn hour!
O, 'tis a draught of passionate repose,
That from thy unsealed fountains deeply flows
Into that fevered spirit—freshening all
Its fainting powers, that hallowed dew doth fall!
The soul is haunted by transcendant dreams—
Unlanguageable hopes! quick spirit-gleams,
That scarce may seem its own, but sent in love
From the most glorious of the worlds above—
Precipitated rays, concentred bright
Into one sun of deep-embosomed light!
No wishes wild the imagination forms,
Heaving with billowy might, like prisoned storms!
No cold regrets round memory's altars cling,
Making them dim sepulchral urns! Each spring
Of feeling trembles into joy! O, Night!
Even now I bless thy solemnizing might—
Even fancies free, that wildly gushed of yore
Their bright meanderings labyrinthine o'er,
Have sunk into one deep and silent stream—
Calm confluence of many a wandering dream!
Beautiful, Night, thou art! thy pomp of gloom
Is richer than the day-spring's living bloom!
Majesty is thy awful soul! thy breath
Is strong as storm, and deep as deepest death!
Beautiful, Night, thou art! no leaf—no flower,
But wins from thee a trebly-precious dower,
To charm—to soothe the o'erwrought unquiet feelings
To administer the calm of tenderest healings,
E'en to the wounded spirit, though its wo
Be of that sort which doth in silence flow!
Beautiful art thou! on the mountains' heights,
Which seem to mingle with thy deathless lights!
Beautiful on the breezy purple sea,
Which only bends, and only yields to thee!
And midst the forest's verdurous solitudes,
Th'unroofed cathedrals of the solemn woods!
And o'er the palm-crowned desert's loneliest breast,
Or wide savannahs of the mighty west!
And now to me—too beautiful thou appearest—
Too deep, too dread a loveliness thou wearest!
My dreams are girt by shadows too profound,
And round my heart too many chains are wound!
Quick tears are swelling in mine upraised eyes—
All vainly questioning thy untroubled skies,
Of things that still must be—thy mysteries!
Vain yearnings start within my trembling soul!
Ye stars! that in immortal triumph roll,
Bear me to peace away! Night, let me part!
Invulnerably beautiful that thou art,
Close not around my spirit—fain 'twould rise
In free upspringings through thy trackless skies!