'WHEN DEAD IS DAY'
I love the quiet night, when earth,
Shackled in iron chains of sleep,
Scarce draws her respirations deep;
For then I weigh
Just what this world is worth,
When dead is day.
It is not in the night alone,
And darkness, evil things have power:
Their foreheads greet the noonday hour
With brazen face,
Vice flaunts it on a throne
I’ the market-place.
Undeafened by humanity's low bass,
I hear the music of the spheres
Too high attuned for mortal ears
To e'er perceive
Without night's listening-space,
And I believe.
For revelations come when darkness falls:
'Tis then I feel an echo in my heart
Throb with a voice—that voice which says, 'Thou art,
Though something, nothing,
And within my halls
Subject, yet king.'
O Immortality! from mortals hid,
Is what thou art, and what thou hast in store,
When we set foot upon that further shore.
Grasp we 'forever,'
Or is, beneath the coffin-lid,
'Forever, never'?