In the Poems night is pictured in these words:
Look, the world’s comforter, with weary gait,
His day’s hot task hath ended in the west;
The owl, night’s herald, shrieks, ’tis very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest.[100]
The time chosen by Bolingbroke for the incantation scene in Gloucester’s garden was
Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,
The time when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl,
And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves.[101]
In a view of winter the owl is made to play its part: