Classic Poem

I.

Once in the senses' night;
Obscure the night, with anxious passions burning;
(O happy hour of flight!)
Forth unobserved I crept;
For all my house lay sunk in rest, and slept.

II.

Secure in covering night,
Disguised, by secret stairways, none discerning;
(O happy hour of flight!)
Forth unobserved I crept,
For all my house lay sunk in rest, and slept.

III.

Under the night's dark wing,
In secret, seen of no one in my flight;
Nor saw I anything;
No lantern and no guide,
Save that which in my heart was all my light;

IV.

Lighting the path before me,
More surely than the brightest noonday light,
To where he waited for me,
Whom all my love endeared;
Where no one else, save only him appeared.

V.

O darkness, which hast guided!
O darkness, yet more lovely than the dawn!
O night, which hast united
The lover with the loved;
And changed into the lover the beloved!

VI.

Against my flowery breast,
Kept whole for him alone to lean upon,
The long night did he rest,
The while I entertained him,
And gentle swaying of the cedars fanned him.

VII.

His floating hair was fanned
By breezes falling from the tower above.
He, with his gentle hand,
Smiting my neck, bereft me
Of knowledge, so that all my senses left me

VIII.

Fainting and all distraught;
My drooping head was resting on my love;
Senseless, resisting not,
I cast off all my cares,
Fallen among sweet lilies unawares.