Classic and Contemporary Poetry
NIGHT RAPTURE; FOR FLORENCE LAMONT, by ROBERT MALISE BOWYER NICHOLS Poet's Biography First Line: How beautiful it is to wake at night Last Line: How beautiful it is to wake at night. Subject(s): Night; Bedtime | ||||||||
HOW beautiful it is to wake at night When over all there reigns the ultimate spell Of complete silence, darkness absolute, To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree, In slow gyration, with no sensible sound, Unless to ears of unimagined beings, Resident incorporeal or stretched In vigilance of ecstasy among Ethereal paths and the celestial maze, The rumour of our onward course now brings A steady rustleas of some strange ship, Darkling with soundless sail all set and amply filled By volume of an ever-constant air, At fullest night, through seas for ever calm, Swept lovely and unknown for ever on! How beautiful it is to wake at night, Embalmed in darkness, watchful, sweet, and still As is the brain's mood flattered by the swim Of currents circumvolent in the void, To lie quite still and to become aware Of the dim light cast by nocturnal skies On a dim earth beyond the window-ledge, So, isolate from the friendly company Of the huge universe which turns without, To brood apart in calm and joy awhile Until the spirit sinks and scarcely knows Whether self is or if self only is For ever ... How beautiful to wake at night Within the room grown strange and still and sweet And live a century while in the dark The dripping wheel of silence slowly turns, To watch the window open on the night, A dewy silent deep where nothing stirs, And, lying thus, to feel dilate within, The press the conflict and the heavy pulse Of incommunicable sad ecstasy Growing until the body seems outstretched In perfect crucifixion on the arms Of a cross pointing from last void to void While the heart dies to a mere midway spark! All happiness thou holdest, happy night, For such as lie awake and feel dissolved The peaceful spice of darkness and the cool Breath hither blown from th' ethereal flowers That mist thy fields! O happy, happy wounds, Conditioned by existence in humanity, That have such powers to heal them!slow sweet sighs Torn from the bosom, silent wails, the birth Of such long-treasured tears as pain his eyes Who, waking, hears the divine solicitudes Of midnight with ineffable purport charged. How beautiful it is to wake at night, Another night, in darkness yet more still Save when the myriad leaves on full-fledged boughs, Filled rather by the perfumes' wandering flood Than by dispansion of the still sweet air, Shall from the furthest utter silences In glimmering secrecy have gathered up An host of whisperings and scattered sighs To loose at last a sound as of the plunge And lapsing seeth of some Pacific wave Which, risen from the star-thronged outer troughs, Rolls in to wreath with languorous foam away The flutter of the golden moths that haunt The star's one glimmer daggered on wet sands! So beautiful it is to wake at night Imagination, loudening with the surf Of the midsummer wind among the boughs, Gathers my spirit from the haunts remote Of faintest silence and the shades of sleep To bear me on the summit of her wave Beyond known shores, beyond the mortal edge, Of thought terrestrial, to hold me poised Above the frontiers of infinity, To which in the full reflux of the wave Come soon I must, bubble of solving foam, Borne to those other shoresnow never mine Save for an hovering instant, short as this Which now sustains me, ere I be drawn back, To learn again and wholly learn I trust How beautiful it is to wake at night. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BREATH OF NIGHT by RANDALL JARRELL HOODED NIGHT by ROBINSON JEFFERS NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP by ROBINSON JEFFERS WORKING OUTSIDE AT NIGHT by DENIS JOHNSON POEM TO TAKE BACK THE NIGHT by JUNE JORDAN COOL DARK ODE by DONALD JUSTICE POEM TO BE READ AT 3 A.M by DONALD JUSTICE ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT by BOB KAUFMAN FULFILLMENT by ROBERT MALISE BOWYER NICHOLS |
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