NIGHT.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.—Psalm xix. 2.
Thou makest darkness, and it is night.—Psalm civ. 20.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee.—Psalm cxxxix. 11, 12.
One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine,
And light us deep into the Deity;
How boundless in magnificence is night!
O what a confluence of ethereal fires,
From urns unnumber’d, down the steep of heaven,
Streams to a point, and centres in my sight!
Nor tarries there, I feel it at my heart.
My heart, at once, it humbles, and exalts;
Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies.
Who sees it unexalted? or unaw’d?
Who sees it, and can stop at what is seen?
Material offspring of Omnipotence!
Inanimate, all animating birth!
Work worthy Him who made it! worthy praise!
All praise! praise more than human! nor denied
Thy praise divine!—But tho’ man, drown’d in sleep,
Withholds his homage, not alone I wake;
Bright legions swarm unseen, and sing, unheard
By mortal ear, the glorious Architect,
In this his universal temple hung
With lustres, with innumerable lights,
That shed religion on the soul; at once
The temple and the preacher! O how loved
It calls devotion! genuine growth of night!
Young.
The glorious sun is gone,
And the gathering darkness of night comes on.
Like a curtain from God’s kind hand it flows,
To shade the couch where His children repose.
Then kneel, while the watching stars are bright,
And give your last thoughts to the Guardian of night.
Henry Ware, Jun.
And still as day concludes in night
To break again with new-born light,
God’s wondrous bounty let me find,
With still a more enlightened mind;
When Grace and Love in one agree,
Grace from God and Love from me;
Grace that will from Heaven inspire,
Love that seals it in desire.
Parnell.
Now, with religious awe, the farewell light
Blends with the solemn colouring of the night.
Wordsworth.
Ye quenchless stars! so eloquently bright;
Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night,
While half the world is lapp’d in blissful dreams,
And round the lattice creep your fairy beams,
How sweet to gaze upon those placid eyes,
In lambent beauty looking from the skies!
And when, oblivious of the world, we stray
At dead of night along some noiseless way,
How the heart mingles with a moon-lit hour,
And feels from heaven a sympathetic power!
See! not a cloud careers yon pathless deep
Of molten azure,—mute as lovely sleep;
Full in her pallid light the moon presides,
Shrined in a halo, mellowing as she rides;
And far around, the forest and the stream
Wear the rich garment of her woven beam.
The lull’d winds, too, are sleeping in her caves,
No stormy prelude rolls upon the waves;
Nature is hush’d, as if her works ador’d,
Still’d into homage of her living Lord!
R. Montgomery.
O, blessed Night! that comes to rich and poor
Alike; bringing us dreams that lure
Our hearts to One above!
Henry B. Hirst.
Clouds and thick darkness are thy throne,
Thy wonderful pavilion;
O, dart from thence a shining ray,
And then my midnight shall be day!
Thomas Flatman.