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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, | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| 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: | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; | |
| The torn deep yawns,—the vessel finds a grave | |
| Beneath its jaggèd gulf. | |
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