NIGHT AND DEATH.
By JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.[B]
Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst flow'r and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?
[B] Joseph Blanco White became a lasting name in literature by virtue of fourteen lines. His sonnet to Night, sometimes known as "Night and Death," was spoken of by Coleridge as "the finest and most grandly conceived sonnet in our language." Leigh Hunt said of it that in point of thought it "stands supreme, perhaps, above all in any language; nor can we ponder it too deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence."
Yet White wrote nothing else that long outlived him. His genius was golden, but it seems to have been a pocket, not a vein; or shall we say that he compressed into a single sonnet the resources which another would have spread over many? At least we may thank him for this that he has left us.
A few words as to the man himself: He was born at Seville, Spain, July 11, 1775; was educated for the priesthood; went to England, where he entered the Established Church and gained the friendship of such men as Newman, Arnold, and Whately; became a Unitarian; and died at Liverpool, May 20, 1841. He wrote several books on religious questions. "To Death" appeared first in the Bijou, in 1828, and next in The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1835.
The Beginnings of Stage Careers.
By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr.