| |
| OH, what a still, bright night! It is the sleep | |
| Of beauteous Nature in her bridal hall. | |
| See, while the groves shadow the shining lake, | |
| How the full moon does bathe their melting green!— | |
| I hear the dew-drop twang upon the pool. | 5 |
| Hark, hark, what music! from the rampart hills, | |
| How like a far-off bugle, sweet and clear, | |
| It searches through the listening wilderness!— | |
| A Swan,—I know it by the trumpet-tone: | |
| Winging her pathless way in the cool heavens, | 10 |
| Piping her midnight melody, she comes. | |
| Beautiful bird! upon the dusk, still world | |
| Thou fallest like an angel,—like a lone | |
| Sweet angel from some sphere of harmony. | |
| Where art thou, where?—no speck upon the blue | 15 |
| My vision marks from whence thy music ranges. | |
| And why this hour—this voiceless hour—is thine, | |
| And thine alone, I cannot tell. Perchance, | |
| While all is hush and silent but the heart, | |
| E’en thou hast human sympathies for heaven, | 20 |
| And singest yonder in the holy deep | |
| Because thou hast a pinion. If it be, | |
| Oh for a wing, upon the aerial tide | |
| To sail with thee a minstrel mariner! | |
| When to a rarer height thou wheelest up, | 25 |
| Hast thou that awful thrill of an ascension,— | |
| The lone, lost feeling in the vasty vault? | |
| Oh for thine ear, to hear the ascending tones | |
| Range the ethereal chambers!—then to feel | |
| A harmony, while from the eternal depth | 30 |
| Steals naught but the pure starlight evermore! | |
| And then to list the echoes, faint and mellow, | |
| Far, far below, breathe from the hollow earth, | |
| For thee, soft, sweet petition, to return. | |
| And hither, haply, thou wilt shape thy neck; | 35 |
| And settle, like a silvery cloud, to rest, | |
| If thy wild image, flaring in the abyss, | |
| Startle thee not aloft. Lone aeronaut, | |
| That catchest, on thine airy looking-out, | |
| Glassing the hollow darkness, many a lake, | 40 |
| Lay, for the night, thy lily bosom here. | |
| There is the deep unsounded for thy bath, | |
| The shallow for the shaking of thy quills, | |
| The dreamy cove, or cedar-wooded isle, | |
| With galaxy of water-lilies, where, | 45 |
| Like mild Diana ’mong the quiet stars, | |
| ’Neath overbending branches thou wilt move, | |
| Till early warblers shake the crystal shower, | |
| And whistling pinions warn thee to thy voyage. | |
| But where art thou?—lost,—spirited away | 50 |
| To bowers of light by thy own dying whispers? | |
| Or does some billow of the ocean-air, | |
| In its still roll around from zone to zone, | |
| All breathless to the empyrean heave thee? | |
| There is a panting in the zenith—hush! | 55 |
| The Swan—how strong her great wing times the silence!— | |
| She passes over high and quietly. | |
| Now peals the living clarion anew; | |
| One vocal shower falls in and fills the vale. | |
| What witchery in the wilderness it plays!— | 60 |
| Shrill snort the affrighted deer; across the lake | |
| The loon, sole sentinel, screams loud alarm;— | |
| The shy fox barks;—tingling in every vein | |
| I feel the wild enchantment;—hark! they come, | |
| The dulcet echoes from the distant hills, | 65 |
| Like fainter horns responsive; all the while, | |
| From misty isles, soft-stealing symphonies. | |
| Thou bright, swift river of the bark canoe, | |
| Threading the prairie-ponds of Washtenung, | |
| The day of romance wanes. Few summers more, | 70 |
| And the long night will pass away unwaked, | |
| Save by the house-dog or the village bell; | |
| And she, thy minstrel queen, her ermine dip | |
In lonelier waters.
Ah! thou wilt not stoop; | |
| Old Huron, haply, glistens on thy sky. | 75 |
| The chasing moonbeams, glancing on thy plumes, | |
| Reveal thee now, a little beating blot, | |
Into the pale Aurora fading.
There!— | |
| Sinks gently back upon her flowery couch | |
| The startled Night;—tinkle the damp wood-vaults | 80 |
| While slip the dew-pearls from her leafy curtains. | |
| That last soft, whispering note, how spirit-like! | |
| While vainly yet mine ear another waits, | |
| A sad, sweet longing lingers in my heart. | |
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