Night

The night is young yet; an enchanted night     In early summer: calm and darkly bright.     I love the Night, and every little breeze     She brings, to soothe the sleep of dreaming trees.     Hearst thou the Voices? Sough! Susurrus! Hark!     Tis Mother Nature whispering in the dark!     Burden of cities, mad turmoil of men,     That vex the daylight, she forgets them then.     Her breasts are bare; Grief gains from them surcease:     She gives her restless sons the milk of Peace.     To sleep she lulls them, drawn from thoughts of pelf     By telling sweet old stories of herself.     .     .     .     .     .     All secrets deep, yea, all I hear and see     Of things mysterious, Night reveals to me.     I know what every flower, with drowsy head     Down-drooping, dreams of, and the seeming dead.     I know how they, escaped from care and strife,     Ironically moralise on Life.     And know what, when the moon walks on the waves     They whisper to each other in their graves.     I know that white clouds drifting from stark coasts     Across the sky at midnight are the ghosts     Of sailors drowned at sea, who yearn to win     A quiet grave beside their kith and kin     In still green graveyards, where they lie at ease     Far from the sound of surge and roar of seas.     I know the message of the mournful rain     That beats upon the widows window-pane.     I know the meaning of the roar of seas;     I know the glad Spring sap-song of the trees;     And that great chant to which in tuneful grooves     The green round earth upon its axis moves;     And that still greater chant the Bright Sun sings,     Fire-crowned Apollo, the great chant that brings     All things to life, and draws through spaces dim,     And star-sown realms, his planets after him.     I know the tune that led, since Life began,     The upward, downward, onward March of Man.     I hear the whispers that the Angels twain     Of Death and Life exchange in meeting, fain     Are they to pause and greet, yet may not stay.     Never! For ever. This is all they say.     I hear the twitterings inarticulate     Of souls unborn that press around the Gate     Of Birth, each striving which shall first escape     From formless vapour into human shape.     I know the tale the bird of passionate heart,     The nightingale, tries ever to impart     To men, though vainly, for I well believe     That in her brown breast beats the heart of Eve,     Who with her sweet, sad, wistful music tries     To tell her sons of their lost Paradise,     And solemn secrets Man had grace to know,     When God walked in the Garden long ago.     .     .     .     .     .     Yea, I have seen, methought, on nights of awe,     The vision terrible Lucretius saw:     The trembling Universe, suns, stars, grief, bliss,     Plunging for ever down a black abyss.     But more I love good Bishop Jeremy,     Who likens all the star-worlds that we see.     Which seem to run an everlasting race,     Unto a snowstorm sweeping on through space.     Suns, planets, stars, in glorious array     They march, melodious, on their unknown way.     Thought, seraph-winged and swifter than the light,     Unto the dim verge of the Infinite,     Pursues them, through that strange ethereal flood     In which they swim (mayhap it is the blood     Of Universal God wherein they are     But corpuscles, sun, satellite, and star.     And their great stream of glory but a dim,     Small pulse in the remotest vein of Him)     Pursues in vain, and from lone, awful glooms     Turns back to earth again with weary plumes.     .     .     .     .     .     Through glacial gulfs of Space the soul must roam     To feel the comfort of its earthly home.     Ah, Mother dear! broad-bosomed Mother Earth!     Mother of all our Joy, Grief, Madness, Mirth!     Mother of flower and fruit, of stream and sea!     We are thy children and must cling to thee.     I lay my head upon thy breast and hear,     Small, small and faint, yet strangely sweet and clear.     The hum and clash of little worlds below,     Each on its own path moving, swift or slow.     And listening, ever with intenter ear,     Through din of wars invisible I hear     A Homer, genius is not gauged by mass,     Singing his Iliad on a blade of grass.     And nations hearken: his great song resounds     Unto the tussocks very utmost bounds.     States rise and fall, each blade of grass upon,     But still his song from blade to blade rolls on     Through all the tussock-world, and Helen still     Is Fairest Fair, and Ajax wild of will.     An Ajax whose huge size, when measured oer,     Is full ten-thousandth of an inch or more.     Still hurls defiance at the gods whose home     Is in the distant, awful, dew-drop dome     That trembling hangs, suspended from a spray     An inch above him, worlds of space away.     Old prophecies foretell, but Time proves all,     The day will come when it, like Troy, shall fall.     Lo! through this small great wondrous song there runs     The marching melody of stars and suns.     .     .     .     .     .     I know these things, yet cannot speak and tell     Their meanings. Over all is cast a spell.     Secrets they are, sealed with a sevenfold seal;     My soul knows what my tongue may not reveal.     .     .     .     .     .     I love the Night! Bright Day the soul shuts in;     Night sends it soaring to its starry kin.     If I must leave at last my place of birth,     This homely, gracious, green, familiar Earth,     With all it holds of sorrow and delight,     I pray my parting-hour may be at night,     And that her curtain dark may softly fall     On scenes I love, ere I depart from all.     Then shall I haply, journeying through the Vast     Mysterious Silences, take one long, last     Fond look at Earth, and watch from depths afar     The dear old planet dwindling to a star;     And sigh farewell unto the friends of yore,     Whose kindly faces I shall see no more.