night

My love and I reside upon the belly of a bridge
with heartbeats of the sky?--the drums upon the bridge.

I've heard of songs that rise at night from pitch black oceans.
I've heard the strums of lyrics made by four hands on a bridge.

My love and I do landscapes for the gardens of the sea.
At night we sleep as seedlings at the center of its bridge.

Once I saw a Sufi breathe in seabirds, and send them out again.
I've seen people bearing blindfolds near the entrance of a bridge.

O come, soft rest of cares! come, Night!
   Come, naked Virtue's only tire,
The reaped harvest of the light
   Bound up in sheaves of sacred fire.
   Love calls to war:
   Sighs his alarms,
   Lips his swords are,
   The field his arms.

Come, Night, and lay thy velvet hand
   On glorious Day's outfacing face;
And all thy crowned flames command
   For torches to our nuptial grace.
   Love calls to war:
   Sighs his alarms,
   Lips his swords are,
   The field his arms.

CYNTHIA, to thy power and thee
   We obey.
Joy to this great company!
   And no day
Come to steal this night away
   Till the rites of love are ended,
And the lusty bridegroom say,
   Welcome, light, of all befriended!

Pace out, you watery powers below;
   Let your feet,
Like the galleys when they row,
   Even beat;
Let your unknown measures, set
   To the still winds, tell to all
That gods are come, immortal, great,
   To honour this great nuptial!

'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say -
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so,
That I would not from her, that had them, go.

There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
Legs wrapped in sand-bags,—lumps of chalk and clay
Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, ‘To-day
We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
Zero’s at nine; how bloody if I’m done in
Under the freedom of that morning sky!’
And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
Of underground, or God’s blank heart grown kind,

'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say -
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so,
That I would not from her, that had them, go.

Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a God-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to paradise.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,

OH, the moon shines bright, and we sail to-night,
And we’re bound for Sourabaya!
So it’s ‘Farewell, Jane!’ for we’re off again
With the turning of the tide!
Oh, the Java girls haven’t got no curls,
But they’ll meet us on the Praya,
And, Malay or Dutch, well, the odds ain’t much,
And the ocean’s deep and wide!

We’re bound for Sourabaya, boys,
Where the girls are kind and brown!
By the break of day we’ll be far away!
Farewell to Sydney town!

Am I waking, am I sleeping?
As the first faint dawn comes creeping
Thro' the pane, I am aware
Of an unseen presence hovering,
Round, above, in the dusky air:
A downy bird, with an odorous wing,
That fans my forehead, and sheds perfume,
As sweet as love, as soft as death,
Drowsy-slow through the summer-gloom.
My heart in some dream-rapture saith,
It is she. Half in a swoon,
I spread my arms in slow delight.--
O prolong, prolong the night,
For the nights are short in June!

Behold! I'm old; my hair is white;
My eighty years are in the offing,
And sitting by the fire to-night
I sip a grog to ease my coughing.
It's true I'm raucous as a rook,
But feeling bibulously "bardy,"
These lines I'm scribbling in a book:
The verse complete of Thomas Hardy.
II
Although to-day he's read by few,
Him have I loved beyond all measure;
So here to-night I riffle through
His pages with the oldtime pleasure;
And with this book upon my knee,
(To-day so woefully neglected)