| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893. | | | | Ultima Thule | Sonnets.
Night |
| | | INTO the darkness and the hush of night | |
| Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away, | |
| And with it fade the phantoms of the day, | |
| The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light. | |
| The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight, | 5 |
| The unprofitable splendor and display, | |
| The agitations, and the cares that prey | |
| Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight. | |
| The better life begins; the world no more | |
| Molests us; all its records we erase | 10 |
| From the dull commonplace book of our lives, | |
| That like a palimpsest is written o’er | |
| With trivial incidents of time and place, | |
| And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives. | | | | |
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