Poems (Cary)/To the Night
HYMN TO THE NIGHT.
Midnight, beneath your sky,Where streaks of soft blue lieBetween the starry ranksLike rivers with white lilies on their banks, Frown not that I am come,A little while to stayFrom the broad light of day. My passion shall be dumb,Nor vex with faintest moanFor my life's summer flownThe drowsy stillness hanging on the air.Therefore, with black despairLet me enfold my brow—I come to gather the gray ashes nowThat in the long gone hoursWere blushing flowers.Give me some gentle comfort, gentle Night,For their untimely blight,Feeding my soul with the delicious soundsOf waters washing over hollow groundsThrough beds of hyacinths, and rushes greenWith yellow ferns and broad-leaved flags between; Where the south winds do sleep,Forgetting their white cradles in the deep.
The future is all dim,No more my locks I trimWith myrtles or gay pansies, as I used,Or with slim jasmines strung with pretty flowers,As in the blessed hoursEre yet I sadly mused,Or covered up from my lamenting eyesThe two sweet skies,With withered holly or the bitter rue,As now, alas! I do.Since Lyra, for whose sake the world was fair,Is lost, I know not where,Ah me! my sweetest songMust do his beauty wrong———To his white hands I give my heavy heart,Saying, Lovely as thou art,Be kindly piteous of my hapless wo!—Full well I knowHow changed I am since all my young heart-beatsWere full of joyance, as of pastoral sweetsThe long bright summer timesWhen Love first taught me rhymes.Yet, dear one, in thy smileThe light they knew erewhileMy eyes would gather back, and in my cheekBeneath thy lip the flush of spring would break.Come, thou, about whose visionary bier I strew in softest fearPale flowers of mandrakes in the nightly dreams,That fly when morning streamsSlant through my casement and fades off again,Soothing no jot my pain—Come back and stay with meAnd we will lovers be!In the brown shadows of the autumn trees,Lingering behind the beesTill the rough winds do blowAnd blustery clouds are full of chilly snow,We'll sing old songs, and with love ditties gayBeguile the hours away. And I with ivy buds thy locks will crown,And when in all their pretty lengths of goldStraightened with moisture cold Sorrowfully drop they down,My hands shall press them dry, the while I keepSoft watches for thy sleep,Weaving some roundelay,Of that pale huntress, haply, whose blue wayAlong the heavens was lost,Finding the low earth sweeter than the skies—Kissing the love-lit eyes Of the fair boy Endymion, as he crossedThe leafy silence of the woods alone,In the old myth-time flown;Haply of Proteus all his dripping flocksAlong the wild sea-rocksDriving to pastures in fresh sprouting meads, His sad brows crownéd with green murmurous reedsFor love of Leonora—she for whomThe blank blanched sands were shapen to a tomb,Where, under the wild midnight's troubled frown,With his pale burden in his arms, went downHer mortal lover. Moaningly the wavesWash by two lonesome graves;One holds the ashes of the beauteous boyWhose harmless joyOf playing the fifth season in the sun,Was all untimely done.
Away, my dream, away!Like young buds blackened in the front of MayAnd wasted in the rude and envious frost,My early hopes are lost.Oh angel of the darkness, come and make, For pity's sake,My bed with sheets as white as sheets may be,And give me sweeter grace to go with thee,Than e'er became my life. No lures have I, To draw thee nigh,Of beauty, wit, or friends to make ado; Haply, or one or two,Seeing me in my shroud, would sigh, "Alas!"As for a daisy gone out of the grassWherein bloomed better flowers. If so it fall,It were an end befitting most of all The close of my bad fortunes. Thou Hearing my pleading now, Knowest well how true I speak,There be no prints of kisses on the cheekI hide against thy bosom, praying to goDown to the chamber low, Wherein I shall be wed With Lyra, dead.