XXIX. Evening and Night.

THE MOON.

FROM THE GREEK OF SAPPHO.

The stars that 'round the beauteous moon

Attendant wait, cast into shade

Their ineffectual luster soon

As she in full-orb’d majesty array’d

Her silver radiance showers

Upon this world of ours.

Translation of J. H. Merivale.

LINES

FROM THE “MEMORABLE MASK.”

Silvan. Tell me, gentle Hour of Night,

Wherein dost thou most delight?

Hour. Not in sleep!

Silvan. Wherein, then?

416Hour. In the frolic view of men.

Silvan. Lov’st thou music?

Hour. Oh, ’tis sweet!

Silvan. What’s dancing.

Hour. E’en the mirth of feet.

Silvan. Joy you in fairies, or in elves.

Hour. We are of that sort ourselves.

But, Silvan, say, why do you love

Only to frequent the grove?

Silvan. Life is fullest of content

When delight is innocent.

Hour. Pleasure must vary, not be long;

Come, then, let’s close, and end the song.

Dr. Thomas Campion 1607.

TO CYNTHIA.

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,

Now the sun is laid to sleep;

Seated in thy silver chair,

State in wonted manner keep:

Hesperus entreats thy light,

Goddess excellently bright!

Earth, let not thy envious shade

Dare itself to interpose;

Cynthia’s shining orb was made

Heaven to clear when day did close;

Bless us, then with wished sight,

Goddess excellently bright!

Lay thy bow of pearl apart,

And thy crystal-shining quiver;

Give unto the flying hart

Space to breathe, how short soever;

Thou that mak’st a day of night,

Goddess excellently bright!

Ben Jonson 1574–1637.

TO NIGHT.

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew

Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,

Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,

This glorious canopy of light and blue?

417Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,

Hesperus with the host of Heaven came,

And lo! creation widened in man’s view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed

Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,

While fly, and leaf, and insect lay revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad’st us blind!

Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife?

If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

Blanco White.

NIGHT.

When I survey the bright

Celestial sphere,

So rich with jewels hung, that night

Doth like an Ethiop bride appear;

My soul her wings doth spread,

And heavenward flies

The Almighty’s mysteries to read

In the large volume of the skies.

For the bright firmament

Shoots forth no flame

So silent, but is eloquent

In speaking the Creator’s name.

No unregarded star

Contracts its light

Into so small character,

Remov’d far from our human sight:

But if we steadfast look,

We shall discern

In it, as in some holy book,

How man may heavenly knowledge learn.

It tells the conqueror

That far-stretch’d power,

Which his proud dangers traffic for,

Is but the triumph of an hour.

418That from the farthest north

Some nation may

Yet undiscovered issue forth,

And o’er his new-got conquest sway.

Some nation yet shut in

With hills of ice,

May be let out to scourge his sin,

Till they shall equal him in vice.

And they likewise shall

Their ruin have;

For as yourselves, your empires fall,

And every kingdom hath a grave.

There those celestial fires,

Though seeming mute,

The fallacy of our desires,

And all the pride of life confute.

For they have watch’d since first

The world had birth,

And found sin in itself accurst,

And nothing permanent on earth.

William Habington, 1560–1647.

TO THE MOON.

FROM THE GERMAN.

Fillest hill and vale again,

Still with softening light!

Loosest from the world’s cold chain

All my soul to-night!

Spreadest round me, far and nigh,

Soothingly thy smile;

From thee, as from friendship’s eye,

Sorrow shrinks the while.

Every echo thrills my heart—

Glad and gloomy mood;

Joy and sorrow both have part

In my solitude.

419River, river, glide along!

I am sad, alas!

Fleeting things are love and song—

Even so they pass!

I have had, and I have lost

What I long for yet;

Ah! why will we, to our cost,

Simple joys forget?

River, river, glide along,

Without stop or stay;

Murmur, whisper to my song,

In melodious play:

Whether on a winter’s night

Rise thy swollen floods,

Or in spring thou hast delight,

Watering the young buds.

Happy he, who, hating none,

Leaves the world’s dull noise,

And with trusty friends alone

Quietly enjoys

What, forever unexpressed,

Hid from common sight,

Through the mazes of the breast

Softly steals the night!

Translation of J. S. Dwight. Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe, 1749–1832.

MOONLIGHT.

FROM THE GERMAN.

Darker than the day,

Clearer than the night,

Shines the mellow moonlight,

From the rocky heights,

Shapes in shimmer clad,

Mistily are mounting.

Pearls of silver dew,

Soft distilling, drop

On the silent meadows.

420Night of sweetest song,

With the gloomy woods,

Philomela mingleth.

Far in ether wide

Yawns the dread abyss

Of deep worlds uncounted.

Neither eye nor ear,

Seeking, findeth here

The end of mazy thinking.

Evermore the wheel

Of unmeasured Time

Turns round all existence;

And it bears away

Swift, how swift! the prey

Of fleet-flitting mortals.

Where soft breezes blow,

Where thou see’st the row

Of smooth-shining beeches;

Driven from the flood

Of the thronging Time,

Lina’s hut receives me.

Brighter than aloft,

In night’s shimmering star,

Peace with her is shining.

And the vale so sweet,

And the sweet moonlight,

Where she dwells, is sweeter.

Anonymous Translation. Carl v. Knebel, 1744–1834.

ELEGY.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF PETRARCH.

In the still evening, when with rapid flight,

Low in the western sky the sun descends

To give expectant nations life and light,

The aged pilgrim, in some clime unknown,

Slow journeying, right onward fearful bends

With weary haste, a stranger and alone;

Yet, when his labor ends,

421He solitary sleeps.

And in short slumber steeps

Each sense of sorrow hanging on the day,

And all the toil of the long past way:

But O each pang, that wakes with morn’s first ray,

More piercing wounds my breast,

When heaven’s eternal light sinks crimson in the west!

His burning wheels when downward Phœbus bends,

And leaves the world to night, its lengthened shade

Each towering mountain o’er the vale extends;

The thrifty peasant shoulders light his spade,

With sylvan carol gay and uncouth note,

Bidding his cares upon the wild winds float—

Content in peace to share

His poor and humble fare,

As in that golden age

We honor still, yet leave its simple ways;

Whoe’er so list, let joy his hours engage:

No gladness e’er has cheer’d my gloomy days,

Nor moment of repose,

However rolled the spheres, whatever planet rose.

When as the shepherd marks the sloping ray

Of the great orb that sinks in ocean’s bed,

While on the east soft steals the evening gray,

He rises, and resumes the accustom’d crook,

Quitting the beechen grove, the field, the brook,

And gently homeward drives the flock he fed;

Then far from human tread,

In lonely hut or cave,

O’er which the green boughs wave,

In sleep without a thought he lays his head:

Ah! cruel Love! at this dark, silent hour,

Thou wak’st to trace, and with redoubled power,

The voice, the step, the air

Of her who scorns my chain, and flies thy fatal snare.

And in some sheltered bay, at evening’s close,

The mariners their rude coats 'round them fold,

Stretched on the rugged plank in deep repose:

But I, though Phœbus sink into the main,

And leave Granada wrapt in night with Spain,

Morocco, and the Pillars fam’d of old—

Though all of human kind,

422And every creature blest,

All hush their ills to rest,

No end to my unceasing sorrows find:

And still the sad account swells day by day;

For, since these thoughts on my lorn spirit prey,

I see the tenth year roll;

Nor hope of freedom springs in my desponding soul.

Thus, as I vent my bursting bosom’s pain!

Lo! from their yoke I see the oxen freed—

Slow moving homeward o’er the furrowed plain:

Why to my sorrow is no pause decreed?

Why from my yoke no respite must I know?

Why gush these tears, and never cease to flow?

Ah, me! what sought my eyes,

When, fixed in fond surprise,

On her angelic face

I gazed, and on my heart each charm impress’d?

From whence nor force nor art the sacred trace

Shall e’er remove, till I the victim rest

Of Death, whose mortal blow

Shall my pure spirit free, and this worn frame lay low.

Translation of Lady Dacre. Francesco Petrarca, 1304–1374.

NIGHT SONG.

FROM THE GERMAN.

The moon is up in splendor,

And golden stars attend her;

The heavens are calm and bright;

Trees cast a deepening shadow,

And slowly off the meadow

A mist is rising silver-white.

Night’s curtains now are closing

'Round half a world reposing

In calm and holy trust:

All seems one vast, still chamber,

Where weary hearts remember

No more the sorrows of the dust.

Translation of C. T. Brooks. Matthias Claudius, 1740–1818.

423

PROGRESS OF EVENING.

From yonder wood mark blue-eyed Eve proceed:

First through the deep, and warm, and secret glens,

Through the pale-glimmering, privet-scented lane,

And through those alders by the river-side:

Now the soft dust impedes her, which the sheep

Have hollow’d out beneath their hawthorn shade.

But ah! look yonder! see a misty tide

Rise up the hill, lay low the frowning grove,

Enwrap the gay, white mansion, sap its sides,

Until they sink and melt away like chalk.

Now it comes down against our village tower,

Covers its base, floats o’er its arches, tears

The clinging ivy from the battlements—

Mingles in broad embrace the obdurate stone

All one vast ocean! and goes swelling on

Slow and silent, dim and deepening waves.

Walter Savage Landor.

NIGHT.

FROM THE ITALIAN.

Night dew-lipped comes, and every gleaming star

Its silent place assigns in yonder sky;

The moon walks forth, and fields and groves afar,

Touched by her light, in silver beauty lie

In solemn peace, that no sound comes to mar;

Hamlets and peopled cities slumber nigh;

While on this rock, in meditation’s mien,

Lord of the unconscious world, I sit unseen.

How deep the quiet of this pensive hour!

Nature bids labor cease—and all obey.

How sweet this stillness, in its magic power

O’er hearts that know her voice and own her sway!

Stillness unbroken, save when from the flower

The whirring locust takes his upward way;

And murmuring o’er the verdant turf is heard

The passing brook—or leaf by breezes stirred.

Borne on the pinions of night’s freshening air,

Unfettered thoughts with calm reflection come;

424And fancy’s train, that shuns the daylight glare,

To wake when midnight shrouds the heavens in gloom;

Now tranquil joys, and hopes untouched by care,

Within my bosom throng to seek a home;

While far around the brooding darkness spreads,

And o’er the soul its pleasing sadness sheds.

Anonymous Translation. Ippolito Pindemonte, 1753–1828.

EVENING.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE OF CAMOENS.

Silent and cool, now freshening breezes blow

Where groves of chestnut crown yon shadowy steep,

And all around the tears of evening weep

For closing day, whose vast orb, westering slow,

Flings o’er the embattled clouds a mellower glow;

While pens of folded herds, and murmuring deep,

And falling rills, such gentle cadence keep,

As e’en might soothe the weary heart of woe.

Yet what to me is eve, what evening airs,

Or falling rills, or ocean’s murmuring sound,

While sad and comfortless I seek in vain

Her who in absence turns my joy to cares,

And, as I cast my listless glances round,

Makes varied scenery but varied pain?

Translation of Viscount Strangford. Luis de Camoens, 1524–1579.

SPRING EVENING.

FROM THE GERMAN.

Bright with the golden shine of heaven, plays

On tender blades the dew;

And the spring-landscape’s trembling likeness sways

Clear in the streamlet’s blue.

Fair is the rocky fount, the blossomed hedge,

Groves stained with golden light;

Fair is the star of eve, that on the edge

Of purple clouds shines bright.

Fair is the meadow’s green—the valley’s copse—

The hillock’s dress of flowers—

The alder-brook—the reed-encircled pond,

O’er-snowed with blossom-showers.

425This manifold world of Love is held in one

By Love’s eternal band;

The glow-worm and the fire-sea of the sun

Sprang from one Father’s hand!

Thou beckonest, Almighty! from the tree

The blossom’s leaf doth fall;

Thou beckonest, and in immensity

Is quenched a solar ball!

Anonymous Translation. Friedrich von Matthisson, 1761–1831.

SONG.

The splendor falls on castle walls,

And snowy summits old in story

The long light shakes across the lakes

And the wild cataract leaps in glory:

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Oh hark! oh hear! now thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, farther going!

Oh! sweet and far, from cliff and scar,

The horns of Elf-land faintly blowing.

Blow; let us hear the purple glens replying,

Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O Love, they die on yon rich sky,

They faint on hill, on field, on river;

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,

And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow; set the wild echoes flying,

And answer, echoes, answer dying, dying, dying.

Alfred Tennyson.

SONG.

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen

Within thy airy shell

By slow Meander’s margent green,

And in the violet embroider’d vale,

Where the love-lorn nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well;

Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair

426That likest thy Narcissus are?

O, if thou have

Hid them in some flow’ry cave,

Tell me but where,

Sweet queen of parley, daughter of the sphere!

So may’st thou be translated to the skies,

And give resounding grace to all heaven’s harmonies.

John Milton, 1608–1674.

LIFE.

Like to the falling of a star,

Or as the flights of eagles are,

Or like the fresh spring’s gaudy hue,

Or silver drops of morning dew,

Or like a wind that chafes the flood,

Or bubbles which on water stood—

Even such is man, whose borrow’d light

Is straight call’d in, and paid to-night,

The wind blows out; the bubble dies;

The spring entomb’d in autumn lies;

The dew dries up; the star is shot;

The flight is past—and man forgot.

Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, 1591–1669.

ON HOPE.

Reflected on the lake, I love

To see the stars of evening glow,

So tranquil in the heaven above,

So restless in the wave below.

Thus heavenly Hope is all serene;

But earthly Hope, how bright soe’er,

Still flutters o’er this changing scene,

As false and fleeting as ’tis fair.

Bishop Heber.

SONNET.

Beauty still walketh on the earth and air,

Our present sunsets are as rich in gold

As ere Iliad’s music was outrolled;

427The roses of the spring are ever fair,

'Mong branches green still ring-doves coo and pair,

And the deep sea still foams its music old.

So, if we are at all divinely souled,

This beauty will unloose our bonds of care.

’Tis pleasant, when blue skies are o’er us bending,

Within old starry-gated Poesy,

To meet a soul set to no worldly tune,

Like thine, sweet friend! oh, dearer this to me

Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon,

Or noble music with a golden ending.

Alexander Smith.

TWILIGHT.

There is an evening twilight of the heart

When its wild passion-waves are lull’d to rest,

And the eye sees life’s fairy scenes depart,

As fades the day-dream in the rosy west.

’Tis with a nameless feeling of regret

We gaze upon them as they melt away,

And fondly would we bid them linger yet.

But Hope is 'round us with her angel lay,

Hailing afar some happier moonlight hour;

Dear are her whispers still, though lost their early power.

In youth the cheek was crimson’d with her glow

Her smile was loveliest then; her matin song

Had heaven’s own music, and the note of woe

Was all unheard her sunny bowers among.

Life’s little world of bliss was newly born;

We knew not, cared not, it was born to die,

Flush’d with the cool breeze and the dews of morn,

With dancing heart we gazed on the pure sky,

And mock’d the passing clouds that dimm’d its blue,

Like our own sorrows then, as fleeting and as few.

And manhood felt her sway too—on the eye,

Half realized her early dreams burst bright,

Her promised bower of happiness seem’d nigh,

Its days of joy, its vigils of delight.

And though at times might lower the thunder-storm,

And the red lightnings threaten, still the air

Was balmy with her breath, and her loved form,

The rainbow of the heart, was hovering there.

428’Tis in life’s noontide she is nearest seen,

Her wreath the summer flower, her robe of summer green.

But though less dazzling in her twilight dress,

There’s more of heaven’s pure beam about her now;

That angel-smile of tranquil loveliness,

Which the heart worships, glowing on her brow;

That smile shall brighten the dim evening-star

That points our destined tomb, nor e’er depart

Till the faint light of life is fled afar,

And hush’d the last deep beating of the heart;

The meteor bearer of our parting breath,

A moonbeam in the midnight cloud of death.

Fitz-Greene Halleck.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

167 mild-maid’s wish upon her, “That she may die in the spring, and milk-maid’s wish upon her, “That she may die in the spring, and

202 from it, being often called Neustadt ander grossen Linden, or Niestad from it, being often called Neustadt an der grossen Linden, or Niestad

324 [Heading missing] III.

374 Where grass and flowers spring Where grass and flowers spring-a

428 A moombeam in the midnight cloud of death. A moonbeam in the midnight cloud of death.

Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.