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AT midnight | |
| The moon arose: and lo! the ethereal cliffs | |
| Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone | |
| Among the stars like sunlight, and around | |
| Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves | 5 |
| Bursting and eddying irresistibly | |
| Rage and resound forever. * * * * * The noonday sun | |
| Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass | |
| Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence | |
| A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, | 10 |
| Scooped in the dark base of those aery rocks, | |
| Mocking its moans, respond and roar forever. | |
| The meeting boughs and implicated leaves | |
| Wove twilight o’er the post’s path, as led | |
| By love, or dream, or God, or mightier Death, | 15 |
| He sought in Nature’s dearest haunt some bank, | |
| Her cradle and his sepulchre. More dark | |
| And dark the shades accumulate,—the oak, | |
| Expanding its immeasurable arms, | |
| Embraces the light beech. The pyramids | 20 |
| Of the tall cedar overarching, frame | |
| Most solemn domes within, and far below, | |
| Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, | |
| The ash and the acacia floating hang | |
| Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed | 25 |
| In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, | |
| Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around | |
| The gray trunks, and as gamesome infants’ eyes, | |
| With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles, | |
| Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, | 30 |
| These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs, | |
| Uniting their close union; the woven leaves | |
| Make network of the dark-blue light of day, | |
| And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable | |
| As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns | 35 |
| Beneath these canopies extend their swells, | |
| Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms | |
| Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen | |
| Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine, | |
| A soul-dissolving odor, to invite | 40 |
| To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, | |
| Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep | |
| Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades | |
| Like vaporous shapes half seen; beyond, a well, | |
| Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, | 45 |
| Images all the woven boughs above, | |
| And each depending leaf, and every speck | |
| Of azure sky, darting between their chasms: | |
| Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves | |
| Its portraiture, but some inconstant star | 50 |
| Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, | |
| Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, | |
| Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, | |
| Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings | |
| Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. | 55 |
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