Sidney Lanier (Сидни Ланьер)

Night


Fair is the wedded reign of Night and Day.
Each rules a half of earth with different sway,
Exchanging kingdoms, East and West, alway.

Like the round pearl that Egypt drunk in wine,
The sun half sinks i’ the brimming, rosy brine:
The wild Night drinks all up: how her eyes shine!

Now the swift sail of straining life is furled,
And through the stillness of my soul is whirled
The throbbing of the hearts of half the world.

I hear the cries that follow Birth and Death.
I hear huge Pestilence draw his vaporous breath:
”Beware, prepare, or else ye die,” he saith.

I hear a haggard student turn and sigh:
I hear men begging Heaven to let them die:
And, drowning all, a wild-eyed woman’s cry.

So Night takes toll of Wisdom as of Sin.
The student’s and the drunkard’s cheek is thin:
But flesh is not the prize we strive to win.

Now airy swarms of fluttering dreams descend
On souls, like birds on trees, and have no end.
O God, from vulture-dreams my soul defend!

Let fall on Her a rose-leaf rain of dreams,
All passionate-sweet, as are the loving beams
Of starlight on the glimmering woods and streams.

Sidney Lanier’s other poems:

  1. Ode to the Johns Hopkins University
  2. From the Flats
  3. Nirvana
  4. A Florida Ghost
  5. Our Hills

Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):

  • Anne Brontë (Энн Бронте) Night (“I love the silent hour of night”)
  • William Morris (Уильям Моррис) Night (“I am Night: I bring again”)
  • Thomas Aird (Томас Эрд) Night (“From sleepless work, and a ne’er-setting sun”)
  • George Russell (Джордж Расселл) Night (“HEART-HIDDEN from the outer things I rose”)
  • William Browne (Уильям Броун) Night (“Now great Hyperion left his golden throne”)
  • Henry Longfellow (Генри Лонгфелло) Night (“Into the darkness and the hush of night”)
  • Charles Heavysege (Чарльз Хевиседж) Night (“‘Tis solemn darkness; the sublime of shade”)
  • James Thomson (Джеймс Томсон) Night (“HE cried out through the night”)
  • Jones Very (Джонс Вери) Night (“I thank thee, Father, that the night is near”)
  • Ella Wilcox (Элла Уилкокс) Night (“As some dusk mother shields from all alarms”)
  • Lucy Montgomery (Люси Монтгомери) Night (“A pale enchanted moon is sinking low”)

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