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I HOW strange at night to wake | |
| And watch, while others sleep, | |
| Till sight and hearing ache | |
| For objects that may keep | |
| The awful inner sense | 5 |
| Unroused, lest it should mark | |
| The life that haunts the emptiness | |
| And horror of the dark! | |
| |
II How strange the distant bay | |
| Of dogs; how wild the note | 10 |
| Of cocks that scream for day, | |
| In homesteads far remote; | |
| How strange and wild to hear | |
| The old and crumbling tower, | |
| Amidst the darkness, suddenly | 15 |
| Take tongue and speak the hour! | |
| |
III Albeit the love-sick brain | |
| Affects the dreary moon, | |
| Ill things alone refrain | |
| From life’s nocturnal swoon: | 20 |
| Men melancholy mad, | |
| Beasts ravenous and sly, | |
| The robber and the murderer, | |
| Remorse, with lidless eye. | |
| |
IV The nightingale is gay, | 25 |
| For she can vanquish night; | |
| Dreaming, she sings of day, | |
| Notes that make darkness bright; | |
| But when the refluent gloom | |
| Saddens the gaps of song, | 30 |
| Men charge on her the dolefulness, | |
| And call her crazed with wrong. | |
| |
V If dreams or panic dread | |
| Reveal the gloom of gloom, | |
| Kiss thou the pillow’d head | 35 |
| By thine, and soft resume | |
| The confident embrace; | |
| And so each other keep | |
| In the sure league of amity | |
| And the safe lap of sleep. | 40 |
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