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The Voice by Thomas Hardy

 

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.

The Phantom Voice by Sarah Helen Whitman

 

Through the solemn hush of midnight,
How sadly on my ear
Falls the echo of a harp whose tones
I never more may hear!

A wild, unearthly melody,
Whose monotone doth move
The saddest, sweetest cadences
Of sorrow and of love:

Till the burden of remembrance weighs
Like lead upon my heart,
And the shadow, on my soul that sleeps,
Will never more depart.

The ghastly moonlight, gliding
Like a phantom through the gloom,
How it fills with solemn fantasies
My solitary room!

And the sighing winds of Autumn,
Ah! how sadly they repeat
That low, bewildering melody,
So mystically sweet!

I hear it softly murmuring
At midnight o’er the hill,
Or across the wide savannas,
When all beside is still.

I hear it in the moaning
Of the melancholy main;
In the rushing of the night-wind,
The rhythm of the rain.

E’en the wild-flowers of the forest,
Waving sadly to and fro,
But whisper to my boding heart
The burden of its woe.

And the spectral moon, now paling
And fading, seems to say,
“I leave thee to remembrances
That will not pass away.”

Ah, through all the solemn midnight,
How mournful ’t is to hark
To the voices of the silence,
The whisper of the dark!

In vain I turn, some solace
From the distant stars to crave:
They are shining on thy sepulchre,
Are smiling on thy grave.

How I weary of their splendor!
All night long they seem to say,
“We are lonely,—sad and lonely,—
Far away,—far, far away!”

Thus, through all the solemn midnight,
That phantom voice I hear,
As it echoes through the silence,
When no earthly sound is near.

And though dawn-light yields to noon-light,
And though darkness turns to day,
They but leave me to remembrances
That will not pass away.

Night-Blowing Flowers by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

 

Children of night! unfolding meekly, slowly,

To the sweet breathings of the shadowy hours,

When dark-blue heavens look softest and most holy,

And glow-worm light is in the forest bowers;

To solemn things and deep,

To spirit-haunted sleep,

To thoughts, all purified

From earth, ye seem allied,

O dedicated flowers!
Ye, from the gaze of crowds your beauty veiling,

Keep in dim vestal urns the sweetness shrined;

Till the mild moon, on high serenely sailing,

Looks on you tenderly and sadly kind.

So doth love’s dreaming heart

Dwell from the throng apart,

And but to shades disclose

The inmost thought, which glows

With its pure life entwined.
Shut from the sounds wherein the day rejoices,

To no triumphant song your petals thrill,

But send forth odours with the faint, soft voices

Rising from hidden streams, when all is still.

So doth lone prayer arise

Mingling with secret sighs,

When grief unfolds, like you,

Her breast, for heavenly dew

In silent hours to fill.

Night by Ann Radcliffe (from Romance of the Forest)

 

Now Ev’ning fades! her pensive step retires,

And Night leads on the dews, and shadowy hours:

Her awful pomp of planetary fires,

And all her train of visionary powers.
These paint with fleeting shapes the dream of sleep,

These swell the waking soul with pleasing dread;

These through the glooms in forms terrific sweep,

And rouse the thrilling horrors of the dead!
Queen of the solemn thought—mysterious Night!

Whose step is darkness, and whose voice is fear!

Thy shades I welcome with severe delight,

And hail thy hollow gales, that sigh so drear!
When, wrapt in clouds, and riding in the blast,

Thou roll’st the storm along the sounding shore,

I love to watch the whelming billows, cast

On rocks below, and listen to the roar.
Thy milder terrors, Night, I frequent woo,

Thy silent lightnings, and thy meteor’s glare,

Thy northern fires, bright with ensanguine hue,

That light in heaven’s high vault the fervid air.
But chief I love thee, when thy lucid car

Sheds through the fleecy clouds a trembling gleam,

And shews the misty mountain from afar,

The nearer forest, and the valley’s stream:
And nameless objects in the vale below,

That floating dimly to the musing eye,

Assume, at Fancy’s touch, fantastic shew,

And raise her sweet romantic visions high.
Then let me stand amidst thy glooms profound

On some wild woody steep, and hear the breeze

That swells in mournful melody around,

And faintly dies upon the distant trees.
What melancholy charm steals o’er the mind!

What hallow’d tears the rising rapture greet!

While many a viewless spirit in the wind

Sighs to the lonely hour in accents sweet!
Ah! who the dear illusions pleas’d would yield,

Which Fancy wakes from silence and from shades,

For all the sober forms of Truth reveal’d,

For all the scenes that Day’s bright eye pervades!

Haunted Spot by Emma Lazarus

 

The close-twined branches interlock o’erhead,

‘Twixt leaf and leaf no ray, no glimpse of blue;

From the live roof is gray green twilight shed,

Heavily clings at noon the dull chill dew;

The snake-like roots of the large trees break through

The black, moist sod; rank weeds spread everywhere,

Damp shadow and mirk vapors fill the air.
A yellowish pool hath slowly filtered here

From drip and ooze and frequent wash of rains:

No lapse of living waters greets the ear,

Thick crust of slime its sluggish surface stains.

Here Silence dwells — a vague, wild terror gains

The soul before this mystery divine,

Evil in action, evil in design.
The poisoned flower hath overwrought the brain.

The wood seems peopled with strange images,

Huge forms uncouth in slow unending train,

Life’s terrors and its nameless miseries,

Now like a sullen mist between the trees,

Now close and threatening, distinct and near,

While hateful discords grate upon the ear.
Sin, madness, poverty, disease and age,

And, halting last, the unmixed evil, death.

How near to her they come, life’s heritage

Of ancient ills! No outlet openeth:

Her wild cry echoes far above, beneath,

Fills the thick air with trouble, wanes and dies,

Meeting the hollow earth and empty skies.

The Dusk Folk by Robin Hyde

 

We are the oldest people, who have watched the world change.

Sun-glow and star pass by us, and these are no longer strange;

Nor is it strange when the moonrise, with delicate pointed hands,

Gathers our thoughts like blossoms, and binds them with crystal bands.

We are the folk of twilight. The ways of our going are clear

As the little lattice of fire traced on the frosty mere;

Silver the locks of our hair, but deep are our hidden eyes

As the black tarn in the crags, where a quivering water lies.

We are the wings of a dream that brushed you in sleep, and was gone,

The silver fruits of the isle you have hungered to look upon;

We are the thought of your heart, and the shadowy shrill

Ghost of challenge that rises from the throat of the daffodil.

Fantasy by Ruth Mather Skidmore

I think if I should wait some night in an enchanted forest
With tall dim hemlocks and moss-covered branches,
And quiet, shadowy aisles between the tall blue-lichened trees;
With low shrubs forming grotesque outlines in the moonlight,
And the ground covered with a thick carpet of pine needles
So that my footsteps made no sound, —
They would not be afraid to glide silently from their hiding places
To the white patch of moonlight on the pine needles,
And dance to the moon and the stars and the wind.

Their arms would gleam white in the moonlight
And a thousand dewdrops sparkle in the dimness of their hair;
But I should not dare to look at their wildly beautiful faces.

Windy Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,

Why does he gallop and gallop about?
Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

And ships are tossed at sea,

By, on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then

By he comes back at the gallop again.

The Rider by John Cowper Powys

On the horses of desire
Over the tossing trees
I have hunted the Pillar of Fire
To his inmost fastnesses.

On the eagles of despair
Where the thunders meet,
I have hunted the Powers of the Air
To their last retreat.

Over chasm and over crag
On the horned moon riding,
I have hunted the night-hag
To her furthest hiding.

On the lions of exultation
I ride to my doom!
No tears of human desolation
Shall find my tomb.

The Bright Rider by John Frederick Freeman

All the night through I drank
Sleep like water or cool cider;
Life flowed over and I sank
Down below the night of clouds….
Then on a pale horse was rider
Through long brushing woods
Where the owl in silence broods,
Quavers, and is quiet again;
Where the grass dark and rank
Breathes on the still air its rain.
Rain and dark and green and sound
Closing slowly round
Swept me as I rode,
And rode on until I came
Where a white cold river flowed
Under woods thin and bare
In the moon’s long candle flame.
Through the woods the wind crawled
Leviathan, and here and there
Branches creaked and old winds howled
Sick for home.
All the night I saw the river,
As a girl that sees beside her
Love, between fear and fear
Riding, and is dumb.
The white horse turned to cross the river,
But the waters like a wall
Rose and hung dark over all;
And as they fell the river wider
Wider grew, and sky was bare
Save of the sick candle’s stare.
Death the divider
Glittered cold and dark and deep
Under banks of fear.
But that rider
Trembling, bright, rode on,
Trembling and bright rode on
Through green lanes of sleep.