Classic Poem

Dear Night! this world's defeat,
The stop to busy fools, care's check and curb,
The day of spirits, my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb;
Christ's progress, and his prayer time;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

God's silent, searching flight,
When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
His still, soft call;
His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch
When spirits their fair kindred catch:

Were all my loud, evil days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,
Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice,
Is seldom rent;
Then I in heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here . . .

There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness: as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear.
O for that Night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim!