WHAT HOUR DO YOU LOVE?
Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine,
Deep felt, in these appear! A simple train
Yet so delightful, mix'd with such kind art,
Such beauty and beneficence combined,
Shade unperceived so softening into shade,
And all so forming an harmonious whole,
That as they still succeed, they ravish still.
Thomson.
The winged Hours!
Commission'd in alternate watch they stand,
The sun's bright portals, and the skies, command;
Close or unfold the eternal gates of day,
Bar heaven with clouds, or roll those clouds away.
Dryden's Virgil.
WHAT HOUR DO YOU LOVE?
When, from ebon streak,
The moon puts forth a little diamond peak,
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy cimeter;
Bright signal, that she only stoops to tie
Her silver sandals, ere deliciously
She bows into the heavens her timid head.
Keats.
2. When morning cometh, with a still
And gliding mystery, on the breaking gray
Of the fresh east.
W. G. Simms.
3. When the stars are out—
Cold, but still beautiful,—a crowded choir,
Harmonious in their heavenly minstrelsy.
Rufus Dawes.
4. When blue-eyed day
Has yielded up her regency, and night,
Exceeding beautiful, resumes her right
As solemn watchman.
Miss M. E. Lee.
5. When sunk the sun, and up the eastern heaven,
Like maiden on a lonely pilgrimage,
Moves the meek star of eve.
Milman.
6. When Phœbus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate,
Comes dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre,
And hurls his glistering beams through gloomy ayre.
Spenser.
7. When on the sunlit limits of the night,
Her white shell trembling amid crimson air,
Glides the young moon.
Shelley.
8. When clouds lay cradled near the setting sun,
And gleams of crimson tinge their braided snow.
Wilson.
9. When the glorious sun has 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.
H. Ware, Jr.
10. You love the deep, deep pause, that reigns
At highest noon, o'er hills and plains.
Carrington.
11. When the stars do disappear,
With only one remaining,
The morning star alone;
Just like a maid complaining,
When all her hopes are gone.
William Crafts.
12. When climbs above the eastern bar
The horned moon, with one bright star
Within the nether lip.
Coleridge.
13. When comes forth the glorious day,
Like a bridegroom richly dight,
And before his flashing ray
Flies the sullen, vanquish'd night.
S. G. Bulfinch.
14. When Apollo doth devise
new apparelling for western skies.
Keats.
15. Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And like phantoms, grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful fire-light,
Dance upon the parlor wall.
Longfellow.
16. When like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arises on the murky earth.
Shelley.
17. Morning in your garden, when each leaf of crisped green
Hangs tremulous in diamonds, with em'rald rays between.
It is the birth of nature, baptized in early dew,
The plants look meekly up and smile as if their God they knew.
Mrs. Gilman.
18. Ah, let the gay the roseate morning hail,
When, in the various blooms of light array'd,
She bids fresh beauty live along the vale,
And rapture tremble in the vocal shade.
Sweet is the lucid morning's opening flower,
Her choral melodies benignly rise;
Yet dearer to your soul the shadowy hour
At which her blossoms close, her music dies.
Miss H. M. Williams.
19. The middle watch of a summer's night,
When earth is dark, but the heavens are bright;
Naught is seen in the vault on high,
But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,
And the flood, which rolls its milky hue,
A river of white on the welkin blue.
Drake.
20. When little birds begin discourse,
In quick, low voices, ere the streaming light
Pours on their nests from out the day's fresh source.
R. H. Dana.
21. Morning, when the sun pours his first light
Amid a forest, and with ray aslant,
Entering its depth, illumes the branchless pines,
Brightening their bark, tinging with redder hue
Its rusty stains, and casting on the earth
Long lines of shadow, where they rise erect
Like pillars of a temple.
Southey—Madoc.
22. Sunrise, slanting on a city, when
The early risen poor are coming in,
Duly and cheerfully to toil, and up
Rises the hammer's clink, with the far hum
Of moving wheels, and multitudes astir,
And all that in a city murmur swells.
N. P. Willis.
23. When the west
Opens her golden bowers of rest,
And a moist radiance from the skies
Shoots trembling down, as from the eyes
Of some meek penitent, whose last
Bright hours atone for dark ones past,
And whose sweet tears o'er wrong forgiven,
Shine, as they fall, with light from heaven.
Moore—Lalla Rookh.
24. The midnight hour, when
Slow through the studious gloom, thy pausing eye,
Led by the glimmering taper, moves around
The sacred volumes of the dead.
Akenside—Pleasures of the Imagination.
25. When evening's virgin Queen
Sits on her fringed throne serene,
And mingling whispers, rising near,
Steal on the still reposing ear.
H. K. White.
26. When the moon riseth as if dreaming,
Treading with still white feet the lulled sea.
From the Etonian.
27. When day hath put on his jacket, and around
His burning bosom button'd it with stars.
O. W. Holmes.
28. Morning, with all her attributes; the slow
Impearling of the heavens, the sparkling white
On the webb'd grass, the fragrant mistiness,
The fresh airs, with the twinkling leaves at sport,
And all the gradual and emerging light,
The crystalline distinctness settling clear,
And all the wakening of strengthening sound.
Milman—Lord of the Bright City.
29. Her twilight robe when nature wears,
And evening sheds her sweetest tears,
Which every thirsty plant receives,
While silence trembles on the leaves.
From every tree, and flower, and bush,
There seems to breathe a soothing hush,
While every transient sound but shows
How deep and still is the repose.
Mrs. Follen.
30. When as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up her wondrous tale,
And, nightly, to the listening earth
Proclaims the story of her birth.
While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
Addison.
31. When thronging constellations rush in crowds,
Paving with fire the sky.
Shelley.
32. A beautiful sunset, when warm o'er the lake
Its splendor, at parting, a summer eve throws,
Like a bride full of blushes, when lingering to take
A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes.
Moore—Lalla Rookh.
33. The midnight hour,
The starlight wedding of the earth and heaven,
When music breathes in perfume from the flower,
And high revealings to the heart are given.
S. L. Fairfield.
34. Weel may'st thou welcome the night's deathly reign,
Wi' souls of the dearest ye're mingling then;
The gowd light o' mornin' is lightless to thee,
But, oh! for the night wi' its ghost revelrie.
William Thom.
35. Come, stir the fire, and close the shutters fast;
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round;
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So will you welcome cheerful evening in.
Cowper—Task.
36. When the moon
Bends her new silver bow, as if to fling
Her arrowy lustre through some vapor's wing.
Park Benjamin.
37. Be it the summer noon; a sandy space
The ebbing tide has left upon its place,
While the broad basin of the ocean keeps
An equal motion, swelling as it sleeps,
Then, slowly sinking, curling to the strand,
Faint, lazy waves o'er-creep the ridgy sand.
Ships in the calm seem anchor'd, for they glide
On the still sea, urged solely by the tide.
Crabbe.
38. Night; when the stars are gemming heaven,
And seem like angels' eyes,
Resuming still their silent watch
Within the far-off skies.
When tenderly they gaze on us,
Those children of the air,
While every ray they send to us
Some message seems to bear.
Miss Lewis.
39. The Sabbath morn
So sweet;—all sounds save nature's voice are still;
Mute shepherd's song-pipe, mute the harvest horn,
A holier tongue is given to brook and rill;
Old men climb silently their cottage-hill,
There ruminate, and look sublime abroad,
Shake from their feet, as thought on thought comes still,
The dust of life's long, dark, and dreary road,
And rise from this gross earth, and give the day to God.
Thomas Miller.
40. When the fair young moon in a silver bow
Looks back from the bending west,
Like a weary soul that is glad to go
To the long-sought place of rest.
When her crescent lies in a beaming crown,
On the distant hill's dark head,
Serene as the righteous looking down
On the world from his dying-bed.
Miss H. F. Gould.
41. When gleaming through the gorgeous fold
Of clouds, around his glory roll'd,
The orb of gold, half hid, half seen,
Swells his rays of tremulous sheen,
That, widely as the billows roll,
Glance quivering on their distant goal.
Sotheby—Constance de Castile.
42. When, like lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red begins to turn.
Butler—Hudibras.
43. When in mid air, on seraph wing,
The paly moon is journeying
In stillest paths of stainless blue.
Keen, curious stars are peering through
Heaven's arch this hour; they dote on her
With perfect love, nor can she stir
Within her vaulted halls apace,
Ere, rushing out with joyous face,
These Godkins of the sky
Smile as she glides in loveliness,
While every heart beats high
With passion, and breaks forth to bless
Her loftier divinity.
Motherwell.
44. When comes still evening on, and twilight gray
Hath in her sober livery all things clad,
Silence accompanying.
Milton—Paradise Lost.
45. When calm the grateful air, and loth to lose
Day's grateful warmth, though moist with falling dews;
Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none;
Look up a second time, and one by one
You mark them twinkle out, with silvery light,
And wonder how they could elude your sight.
Wordsworth.
46. When your fire, with dim unequal light,
Just glimmering, bids each shadowy image fall
Sombrous and strange upon the darkening wall,
Ere the clear taper chase the deepening night.
W. L. Bowles.
47. When the sun's broad orb
Seems resting on the burnish'd wave,
And lines
Of purple gold hang motionless,
Above the sinking sphere.
Shelley.
48. Morn breaking in the east. When purple clouds
Are putting on their gold and violet,
To look the meeter for the sun's bright coming.
N. P. Willis.
49. When the day
In golden slumber sinks, with accent sweet
Mild evening comes, to lure the willing feet
With her to stray,
Where'er the bashful flowers the observant eye may greet.
H. Pickering.
50. The light of midnight skies
When the red meteor rides the cloud.
Miss Landon.
51. When at noon,
High on his throne, the visible lord of light
Rides in his fullest blaze, and dashes wide
Thick flashes from his wheels
J. G. Percival.
52. Night on the waves, when the moon is on high,
Hung like a gem on the brow of the sky,
Treading its depths in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds as they pass her to light.
J. K. Hervey.
53. When yonder western throng of clouds
Retiring from the sky,
So calmly move, so softly glow,
They seem, to fancy's eye,
Bright creatures of a better sphere,
Come down at noon to worship here,
And from their sacrifice of love
Returning to their courts above.
G. D. Prentice.
54. When the moon, her lids unclosing, deigns
To smile serenely on the charmed sea,
That shines, as if inlaid with lightning chains,
From which it hardly struggled to be free.
Epes Sargent.
55. The high festival of night,
When earth is radiant with delight,
And fast as weary day retires
The heaven unfolds its secret fires,
Bright, as when first the firmament
Around the new-made world was bent,
And infant seraphs pierced the blue,
Till rays of heaven came shining through.
W. B. O. Peabody.
56. When the sun
Rises, visiting earth with light, and heat,
And joy; and seems as full of youth, and strong
To mount the steep of heaven, as when the stars
Of morning sang to his first dawn.
Pollok—Course of Time.
57. Let others hail the oriflamme of morn,
O'er kindling hills unfurl'd, with gorgeous dyes,
Oh, mild blue evening, still to thee we turn,
With holier thoughts and with undazzled eyes.
R. C. Sands.
58. Night; when a cloud, which through the sky,
Sailing alone, doth cross in her career
The rolling moon;—to watch it as it comes,
And deem the deep opaque will blot her beams;
But melting like a wreath of snow, it hangs
In folds of wavy silver round, and clothes
The orb with richer beauties than her own;
Then, passing, leaves her in her light serene.
Southey—Madoc.
59. Thine own loved moon's,
That every soft and solemn spirit worships;
That lovers love so well; strange joy is hers,
Whose influence o'er all tides of soul hath power.
She lends her light to rapture and despair;
The glow of hope, and wan hue of sick fancy,
Alike reflect her rays; alike they light
The path of meeting or of parting love;
Alike on mingling or on breaking hearts
She smiles in throned beauty.
Maturin—Bertram.
60. Sunrise;
Rolling back the clouds into
Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky,
With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,
And billows purpler than the ocean's, making
In heaven a glorious mockery of the earth,
So like, we almost deem it permanent;
So fleeting, we can scarcely call it aught
Beyond a vision, 'tis so transiently
Scatter'd along the eternal vault; and yet
It dwells upon the soul, and sooths the soul,
And blends itself into the soul, until
Sunrise and sunset form the haunted epoch
Of sorrow and of love.
Byron—Sardanapalus.