Classic Poem

The day is shut: — November's night,
On Newark's long and rolling height
Falls suddenly and soon; —
At once the myriad stars disclose;
And in the east a glory glows
Like that the red horizon shows
Above the moon.

But on the western mountain tops
The moon, in new-born beauty, drops
Her pale and slender ring;
Still, like a phantom rising red
O'er haunted valleys of the dead,
I see the distant east dispread
Its fiery wing.

I know by thoughts, which, like the skies,
Grow darker as they slowly rise
Above my burning heart,
It is the light the peasant views,
Through nightly falling frost and dews,
While Fancy paints in brighter hues
The distant mart.

Through shadowy hills and meadows brown
The calm Passaic reaches down
Where the broad waters lie; —
From hillside homes what visions teem
The fruitless hope — ambitious dream —
Go freighted downward with the stream,
And yonder die!

And youths and maids with strange desires
O'er quiet homes and village spires
Behold the radiance grow;
They see the lighted casements fine —
The crowded halls of splendour shine —
The gleaming jewels and the wine —
But not the woe!

Take from yon flaunting flame the ray
Which glows on heads untimely gray,
On blasted heart and brain, —
From rooms of death the watcher's lamp,
From homes of toil, from hovels damp,
And dens where Shame and Crime encamp
With Want and Pain: —

From vain bazaars and gilded halls,
Where every misnamed pleasure palls,
Remove the chandeliers;
Then mark the scanty, scattered rays,
And think amid that dwindled blaze
How few shall walk their happy ways
And shed no tears!

But now, when fade the fevered gleams,
Some trouble melts away to dreams,
Some pain to sweet repose: —
And as the midnight shadows sweep,
Life's noisy torrent drops to sleep,
Its unseen current dark and deep
In silence flows.