The Night. (John iii. 2.)
“Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes
Thy long expected healing wings could see,
When thou didst rise;
And, what can never more be done,
Did at midnight speak with the Sun!
“O who will tell me where
He found thee at that dead and silent hour?
What hallow’d solitary ground did bear
So rare a flower;
Within whose sacred leaves did lie
The fulness of the Deity?
“No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone,
But his own living works, did my Lord hold
And lodge alone;
Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.
“Dear night! this world’s defeat;
The stop to busie fools; care’s check and curb;
The day of Spirits; my soul’s calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ’s[46] 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.”
At the end he has these striking words—
“There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness——”
This brings to our mind the concluding sentence of Mr. Ruskin’s fifth chapter in his second volume—“The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea.” Plato, if we rightly remember, says—“Truth is the body of God, light is His shadow.”