Night and the Soul
I went to bed with Shakespeare’s flowing numbers
Within me chiming,
As I sank slowly to my pleasant slumbers,
My thoughts with his were rhyming.
Out of the window I saw the moonlight shadows
Go creeping slow;
The sheeted roofs of snow– the broad white meadows
Lay silently below.
A few keen stars were kindly winking through
The frost-dimmed panes,
And dreaming Chanticleer woke up and crew
Far o’er the desolate plains.
But soon into the void abyss of sleep
My mind did swoon;
I saw no more the broad house-shadows creep
Beneath the silent moon.
I woke; the morning sun was mounting slowly
O’er the live earth:-
Say, fancy, why the shade of melancholy
Which then in me took birth?
Why does the night give to the spirit wings,
Which day denies?
Ah, why this tyranny of outward things
When brightest shine the skies?
My soul is like the flower that blooms by night,
And droops by day;
Yet may its fruit expand, though in the light
Night-blossoms drop away.
The visions thus in dreamy stillness cherished,
Like dreams may fly;
But day’s great acts, o’er thoughts that nightly perished,
may ripen, not to die!
