Page:Forget Me Not (1824).djvu/214

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NIGHT.
Night is the time to weep;
To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory, where sleep
The joys of other years;
Hopes that were angels in their birth,
But perish'd young, like things of earth.

Night is the time to watch;
On ocean's dark expanse,
To hail the Pleiades, or catch
The full moon's earliest glance,
That brings into the home-sick mind
All we have loved and left behind.

Night is the time for care;
Brooding on hours misspent,
To see the spectre of despair.
Come to our lonely tent;
Like Brutus, midst his slumbering host,
Startled by Cæsar's stalwart ghost.

Night is the time to muse;
Takes flight, and with expanding views,
Then from the eye, the soul
Beyond the starry pole,
Descries athwart the abyss of night
The dawn of uncreated light.