Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, QUEEN OF NIGHT, by ARTHUR E. JENNER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

QUEEN OF NIGHT, by                    
First Line: Full often have I stood at close of day
Last Line: And she had gone.
Subject(s): Fantasy; Night; Bedtime


Full often have I stood at close of day,
Alone, on some high wind-swept, rock-tipped peak
To watch the dark-haired, purple vestured sprites
Of night draw darkening shades across the vales,
And slowly, as the moon climbed up the skies,
They tugged their purple covers up the hills
Till all the heights were fairly clothed in black.

But once I stood on Hosper's Hill by chance
Or by some unknown working of the fates.
'Twas in the month of breaking bud and green,
And lo, a silvery, opal, milky moon
Full, large and round stole upward from the sea.
The sun, in shame, hid all his splendor now
Behind the western clouds to blush unseen.
And by my side a comely maiden stood
All clad in raiment, soft, diaphanous.
Full long we stood there each without a word.

"I came to watch in ecstasy, alone,
The sable clothed Queen of all the Night
Draw her dark purple covers o'er the woods."
"But I am Queen of Night," she softly said,
"These purple-vestured maids are but my shades,
They steal about where I must e'er direct.
Too often, though, they steal behind the hills
To flirt with some gay, wind-blown sporting youth;
Then I must seek them out and drive them hence."

"But you are beautiful beyond compare,"
I murmured, while my blood raced hot and fast,
"See, how your fine-spun, silken hair is tossed
In golden, glinting wavelets on the breeze.
Mark that queer curl that blows beside your ear."

"And Night is beautiful, far more than day,
But mortals all too often know it not.
Their senses coarsened by Day's drunken light
Are powerless to behold ethereal Night."

"How light your eyes, how shell-like is your skin,
And your fair, silver shawl. 'Tis not like Night."
" 'T was woven at midnight in an elfin dell,
Of turquoise moonbeams trimmed with starlight lace.
'Tis therefore most like Night. It is the Night!"

E'en so we talked together hour on hour
While all the world became a silvered dream
Bath'd in moonlight of opalescent hues,
While midst the pines and sturdy age-old oaks,
The night winds played a symphony of love.
Then, as the full moon reached its central point
The workers of the Night all danced and sang
An eerie tale of love and mystic hour.

"Come, pretty creature, Queen of beauteous Night!
Let's consecrate this holy hour of noon
With lover's kiss." The maiden started, moved
And seemed to float, to vanish down the slope.

So while the moon rode slowly down the skies
I followed ever after her bright form,
Now sighting her in some clear moonlit brake,
Now losing sight of all but her pale shawl
Of turquoise moonbeams floating on the air:
Through vale, up ridge, and over hill, down dale,
And through thorn-bristling copse I sped until
My limbs were worn and weary of the chase.

Once, as the morning star burned in the east,
I stopped beside a moon-flecked, rushing brook
And looked and saw her standing just beyond.
"'Tis almost morn," she cried, and fled before.
So up the slope I sped with new-found strength
And gained at length the wind-swept, rock-scarred peak
From whence the unequal game had been begun;
And found her sitting on a jagged crag
Behind some scrubby weather-beaten yews.
I went toward her slowly, and she gazed,
Nor bade me stop, but opened wide her arms
And clasped me quietly to her pounding breast,
Her lips had scarce touched mine when morning came—
And she had gone.





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