Night

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

From “Queen Mab”

HOW beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh

Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening’s ear

Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven’s ebon vault,

Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls,

Seems like a canopy which love has spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,

Robed in a garment of untrodden snow:

Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend

So stainless that their white and glittering spires

Tinge not the moon’s pure beam; yon castle steep,

Whose banner hangeth o’er the time-worn tower

So idly that rapt fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace—all form a scene

Where musing solitude might love to lift

Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;

Where silence undisturbed might watch alone,

So cold, so bright, so still.

The orb of day

In southern climes o’er ocean’s waveless field

Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath

Steals o’er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve

Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;

And vesper’s image on the western main

Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes:

Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,

Rolls o’er the blackened waters; the deep roar

Of distant thunder mutters awfully;

Tempest unfolds its pinion o’er the gloom

That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend,

With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;

The torn deep yawns,—the vessel finds a grave

Beneath its jaggèd gulf.