| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | VI. A Summer Night | | By Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber (1814–1890) |
| | | ’NEATH the mild beauty of a summer night, | |
| I leave my chamber to enjoy the air,— | |
| To feel its eddies circling in my hair, | |
| And feel it kiss my brow in wild delight. | |
| The starry gems bestud the concave high; | 5 |
| O blessed Stars! on you I fix my eye, | |
| And long for your bright spheres to take my flight. | |
| Beneath o’erlacing elms, shut out from sight, | |
| I stray, my head reclined upon my breast,— | |
| My thoughts away, away amid the blest,— | 10 |
| The world forgot, in my abstractions, quite. | |
| Hark! there ’s a sound of earth, a note of bliss,— | |
| A most ecstatic smack, I wis,— | |
| Borne to my ear from darkness, comes a lover’s kiss! | | | | |
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