Classic Poem

O Benevolent Night — kindest caress of the Cosmic Wonder,
Life-renewing ebb in the eternal rhythm;
Rehearsing us for the longer slumber in
The endless cycle. How pityingly you pour
From out your silver urn the flood
Of silence; washing clean our wounds
And giving us release. How tenderly

You wrap us in a filmy shroud and press
To our tired lips the vial of forgetfulness.
The gracious trees and all the sweet, green
Garmenting of Earth welcome your coming;
For everything that knows the strain of living
Must lie awhile in the shadow of rest.
Benignant Night — large — vague — elusive
And releasing: bowl of purity; wide altar of
New resurrections, you fold the nakedness
Of Earth in a cloak of softest velvet,
Clasps of Crystal, and lift the shutters of
The Cosmos, letting in Immensity upon
Our Earth-pent minds, so we may guess
Our ignorance and bow before Infinity.
You close for us the shutters of our world
And even as we drop the impeding garments of
The day, we let fall consciousness.
Secluding yet expanding Night,
Supreme Magician, shutting us in that we
May further see and understand
We nothing, understand. What pageants,
Pictures and what depths — seas whose
Gleaming shoals are deeper than all thought
And clustered universes make the foam.
Whose couriers of light set out for Man
And his too petty globe before man was,
And only now are here — only with Night may we
Gallop with Alcor and Mizar — stand for a moment of
Eternity with the splendid Archer, brother with Mars
And drink the wine which the Grape-gatherer
Has pressed from fruited Time.
Contemplation shatters against the wonder
And so we go into our Greater Night — unsatisfied.
Maternal Night — soothing and protecting;
Shrouding all things in diaphanous veils
And filling the void with strange and vaporous
Masses — infiltrating the mind with mystery
So that the groves become secret and sacred;
Inviting lovers for whom the trees are
Watchful sentinels; breathing benediction
Over leafy cloisters.
Night — doorway to Infinity, where I may loose
My soul — even to Orion.
Cool and healing stream flowing with soft
Murmur between the cliffs of days.
A silver lute — exquisite beyond measure;
Mellifluously tuned by the Everlasting
To soothe the brazen trumpets into gentler Harmony.

To the Poor, night is welcome for, like Death,
It brings oblivion and cessation of labor.
They do not thrill with the call of whip-poor-wills;
And the faint cry of spotted night-hawks
Wheeling high above the turmoil of the city,
Dropping their voices from a star solitude;
Nor ever listen to the plaintive shrilling
Of insects bidding farewell to dusky Summer.
Or, in the purifying silence, rejoice at the happy
Metallic orchestra of swampy frogs.

Do they who wrest all things from the Mother
Know the infinite kindness of the Mother?
They neither know the dazzlry of the sky-hung lamps,
Nor the glitter of that lower firmament
They themselves have caused, to sparkle on the darkness;
To be twisted into golden serpents by the rivers,
Or be tangled with the Moon.
They are too tired to know
Night's dark and deathlike beauty,
Holding in its bud the joy of waking.
They do not know that Night is the holiday of the Soul
Who then runs abroad, meeting her companions;
The trees and the rocks; voyaging so far as El Nath or Algol.
In the Night I meet my own Soul, a stranger,
And together we wander far, listening, watching.