A NIGHT THOUGHT
Composed 1837.—Published 1837
[These verses were thrown off extempore upon leaving Mrs. Luff’s house at Fox Ghyll one evening. The good woman is not disposed to look at the bright side of things, and there happened to be present certain ladies who had reached the point of life where youth is ended, and who seemed to contend with each other in expressing their dislike of the country and climate. One of them had been heard to say she could not endure a country where there was “neither sunshine nor cavaliers.”—I.F.]
This poem was first published in The Tribute, a Collection of Miscellaneous unpublished Poems by various Authors, edited by Lord Northampton, in 1837, “for the benefit of the widow and family of the Rev. Edward Smedley.” (The same volume contained a poem by Southey on Brough Bells.) It next found a place in “Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years” (1842). A stanza given in The Tribute, No. 2 (see below), was omitted afterwards.—Ed.
Lo! where the Moon along the sky
Sails with her happy destiny;[164]
Oft is she hid from mortal eye
Or dimly seen,
But when the clouds asunder fly 5
How bright her mien![165]