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(From The Culprit Fay)
’T IS the middle watch of a summer’s night: | |
| The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; | |
| Naught is seen in the vault on high | |
| But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, | |
| And the flood which rolls its milky hue, | 5 |
| A river of light on the welkin blue. | |
| The moon looks down on old Cronest: | |
| She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, | |
| And seems his huge gray form to throw | |
| In a silver cone on the wave below; | 10 |
| His sides are broken by spots of shade | |
| By the walnut bough and the cedar made, | |
| And through their clustering branches dark | |
| Glimmers and dies the fire-fly’s spark,— | |
| Like starry twinkles that momently break | 15 |
| Through the rifts of the gathering tempest’s rack. | |
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| The stars are on the moving stream, | |
| And fling, as its ripples gently flow, | |
| A burnished length of wavy beam | |
| In an eel-like spiral line below; | 20 |
| The winds are whist and the owl is still, | |
| The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, | |
| And naught is heard on the lonely hill | |
| But the cricket’s chirp, and the answer shrill | |
| Of the gauze-winged katydid; | 25 |
| And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, | |
| Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, | |
| Ever a note of wail and woe, | |
| Till morning spreads her rosy wings, | |
| And earth and sky in her glances glow. | 30 |
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