Sacred Meditations and Moral Themes In Verse :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Day is earth, but holy Night is heav'n;
To her a solitude of soul is given,
Within whose depth, how beautiful to dream,
And fondly be, what others vainly seem!
Oh, 'tis an hour of consecrated might,
For earth's Immortals have adored the night;
In song or vision yielding up the soul
To the deep magic of her still control.
My own loved hour! there comes no hour like thee,
No world so glorious as thou form'st for me;
The fretful ocean of eventful day,—
To waveless nothing how it ebbs away!
As oft the Chamber, where some haunted page
Renews a poet, or revives a sage
In pensive Athens, or sublimer Rome,
To mental quiet woos the Spirit home.
There stillness reigns, how eloquently deep!
And soundless air, more beautiful than sleep:
Let Winter sway,—her dream-like sounds inspire;
The conscious murmur of a blazing fire;

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The hail-drop, hissing as it melts away
In twinkling gleams of momentary play;
Or wave-like swell of some retreated wind,
In dying sadness echoed o'er the mind,—
But gently ruffle into varied thought
The calm of feeling blissful night has brought.
How eyes the spirit, with contented gaze,
The chamber mellowed into social haze,
And smiling walls, where, ranked in solemn rows,
The wizard volumes of the mind repose!
Thus, well may hours like fairy waters glide,
Till morning glimmers o'er their reckless tide.
While dreams, beyond the realm of day to view,
Around us hover in seraphic hue;
Till Nature pines for intellectual rest,—
When home awakens, and the heart is blest;
Or from the window reads our wand'ring eye
The starry language of Chaldéan sky;
And gathers in that one vast gaze above,
A bright eternity of awe and love.

So heavenly seems the visionary night,—
But, ah! the danger in its deep delight:—
The Mind, then beautified to fond excess,
Will all things dare to brighten, or to bless:
A world of sense more spiritual is made
Than the stern eye of nature hath surveyed;

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Some false perfection which hath never been,
By fancy woven, lives through every scene;
But Morn awakes,—and lo! the spells unwind,
As daylight melts like darkness o'er the mind;
The worldly coarseness of our common lot
Recalls the shadows which the night forgot,
Each dream of loftiness then dies away,
And heaven-light withers in the frown of Day!
And then, the languor of each parching vein,
And the hot weariness of heart and brain,
That hideous shade of something dread to be,—
Oh, fatal midnight! these are doomed for thee;
Each breeze comes o'er us with tormenting wing,
Each pulse of sound an agony can bring.
Let Chatterton thy deathful charm reveal
And mournful White, who from thy depth would steal
A placid sense of some unvisioned Power,
Around prevailing at thine earthless hour:
And oft, methinks, in loneliness of heart,
As noons of night in dreaming calm depart,
My room is saddened with the mingled gaze
Of those who martyr'd their ambitious days;
The turf-grass o'er their tombs,—I see it wave,
And visions waft me to a kindred grave.

But, lo! the yielding dark hath gently died,
And stars are sprinkled o'er the azure tide

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Of lustrous air, that high and far prevails,
Where now the night-enchanting glory sails.
City of fame! when morn's first wings of light
Have waved in beauty o'er thy mansions bright,
Have I beheld thee; but a moonrise seems,
Like hues that wander from a heaven of dreams,
To hallow thee, as there thy temples stand
Sublimely tender, or serenely grand;
Spire, tower, and pinnacle, a dim array,
Whose wizard shadows in the moonlight sway.
The stony muteness of thy massive piles,
Now silvered o'er by melancholy smiles,
With more than language, spirit-like appeals
To the high sense impassioned nature feels
Of all that gloriously, in earth or sky,
Exacts the worship of her gazing eye.—
There is a magic in the moonlit hour
Which Day hath never in his deepest power
Of light and bloom, when bird and bee resound,
And new-born flowers imparadise the ground.
And ne'er hath city, since a moon began
To hallow nature for the soul of man,
Steeped in the freshness of her fairy light,—
More richly shone, than Oxford shines to-night!
No lines of harshness on her temples frown,
But all by soothing magic melted down,—

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Sublime and soft, through mellow air they rise,
And seem with vaster swell to awe the skies!
On archéd windows how intensely gleams
The glassy whiteness of reflected beams!
Whose radiant slumber on the marble tomb
Of mitred Founders, in funereal gloom,
Extends; or else in pallid shyness falls
On gothic casements, or collegiate walls.
The groves in silver-leafed array repose;
And, Isis!—how serene thy current flows
With tinted surface by the meadowy way,
Without a ripple, or a breeze at play:
Yet, once again shall summer barks be seen,
And furrowed waters, where their flight has been;
While sounding Rapture, as her heroes speed
From Iffly locks, flies glorying o'er the mead,
Hails from the bank as up the river ride,
In oary swiftness and exulting pride
Her barks triumphal,—let the Flag be reared,
And thousands echo, when the colour's cheered!

Again, upon the wind a wafted swell
Of ebbing sound, proclaims a midnight bell;
Lo! phantom clouds come floating by the moon,
Then melt away, like happiness, too soon!
And as they glide, an onward-moving smile
Of glassy light is mirrored on each pile.

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Farewell the scene! Farewell the fleeting song!
Wherein my spirit hath been borne along
In light and gloom through many a lonely hour,
With nought to gladden but its own weak power.
In morning youth far brighter dreams have played
Around a heart which Hope has oft betrayed,
Than those which hover o'er this dying strain;
But,—faded once, they never form again.
Farewell to Oxford! soon will flying years
The word awaken that is spoke by tears;
When scheming boyhood plann'd my future lot,
No scene arose where Oxford center'd not;
And now, as oft her many-mingled chimes
Swell into birth, like sounds of other times,
Prophetic life a woven myst'ry seems,
Unravelled oft by consummated dreams.

Farewell!—if when I cease to haunt her scene,
Some gentle heart remember I have been,
As Oxford, with her palaces and spires,
The mind ennobles, or the fancy fires,
No vain reward his chosen theme attends,
Howe'er the fate of him who sung it, ends.

Oh, fearful Time, the fathomless of thought,
With what a myst'ry is thy meaning fraught!

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Thy wings are noiseless in their rush sublime
O'er scenes of glory, as o'er years of crime;
Yet comes a moment when thy speed is felt,
Till past and future through our being melt,
And a faint awfulness from Worlds unknown,
In shadowy darkness gathers round her own.
A moment! well may that a moral be,
Whoe'er thou art, 'tis memory to thee:
A tomb it piled, a mother bore to heaven,
Or, like a whirlwind o'er the ocean driven,
Rushed on thy fate with desolating sway,
And flung a desert o'er thy darkened way.—
A moment!—midnight wears her wonted hue,
And orbs of beauty speak yon skyward view;
Deep, hushed, and holy is the world around,
But yet, what energies of Life abound,
Fermenting through the mighty womb of space,
Where Time and Nature multiply their race;
What hearts, whose awful destinies awake,
Till Heav'n and Hell some daring impulse make.
And thou! far universe, to sight unknown,
Radiant with God, and centered by His throne,
Man cannot soar, but dreams would fain expand
Their wingéd powers o'er thine unclouded land,
Where glory circles from the Mystic Three,
Where Life is Love, and Love is Deity!