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| THE DAY is shut;—November’s night, | |
| On Newark’s long and rolling height | |
| Falls suddenly and soon;— | |
| At once the myriad stars disclose; | |
| And in the east a glory glows | 5 |
| Like that the red horizon shows | |
| Above the moon. | |
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| But on the western mountain tops | |
| The moon, in new-born beauty, drops | |
| Her pale and slender ring; | 10 |
| Still, like a phantom rising red | |
| O’er haunted valleys of the dead, | |
| I see the distant east dispread | |
| Its fiery wing. | |
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| I know by thoughts, which, like the skies, | 15 |
| Grow darker as they slowly rise | |
| Above my burning heart, | |
| It is the light the peasant views, | |
| Through nightly falling frost and dews, | |
| While Fancy paints in brighter hues | 20 |
| The distant mart. | |
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| Through shadowy hills and meadows brown | |
| The calm Passaic reaches down | |
| Where the broad waters lie;— | |
| From hillside homes what visions teem! | 25 |
| The fruitless hope, ambitious dream, | |
| Go freighted downward with the stream, | |
| And yonder die! | |
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| And youths and maids with strange desires | |
| O’er quiet homes and village spires | 30 |
| Behold the radiance grow; | |
| They see the lighted casements fine, | |
| The crowded halls of splendor shine, | |
| The gleaming jewels and the wine, | |
| But not the woe! | 35 |
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| Take from yon flaunting flame the ray | |
| Which glows on heads untimely gray, | |
| On blasted heart and brain,— | |
| From rooms of death the watcher’s lamp, | |
| From homes of toil, from hovels damp, | 40 |
| And dens where Shame and Crime encamp | |
| With Want and Pain:— | |
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| From vain bazaars and gilded halls, | |
| Where every misnamed pleasure palls, | |
| Remove the chandeliers; | 45 |
| Then mark the scanty, scattered rays, | |
| And think amid that dwindled blaze | |
| How few shall walk their happy ways | |
| And shed no tears! | |
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| But now, when fade the fevered gleams, | 50 |
| Some trouble melts away to dreams, | |
| Some pain to sweet repose;— | |
| And as the midnight shadows sweep, | |
| Life’s noisy torrent drops to sleep, | |
| Its unseen current dark and deep | 55 |
| In silence flows. | |
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