Coventry Patmore (Ковентри Патмор (Пэтмор))
Night And Sleep
How strange at night to wake And watch, while others sleep, Till sight and hearing ache For objects that may keep The awful inner sense Unroused, lest it should mark The life that haunts the emptiness And horror of the dark! How strange at night the bay Of dogs, how wild the note Of cocks that scream for day, In homesteads far remote; How strange and wild to hear The old and crumbling tower, Amid the darkness, suddenly Take tongue and speak the hour! Albeit the love-sick brain Affects the dreary moon, Ill things alone refrain From life's nocturnal swoon: Men melancholy mad, Beasts ravenous and sly, The robber, and the murderer, Remorse, with lidless eye. The nightingale is gay, For she can vanquish night; Dreaming, she sings of day Notes that make darkness bright; But when the refluent gloom Saddens the gaps of song, Men charge on her the dolefulness, And call her crazed with wrong.
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