SOUTHEY, Robert


How beautiful is night

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air;

No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,

Breaks the serene of heaven;

In full-orb’d glory, yonder moon divine

Rolls through the dark blue depths.

Beneath her steady ray

The desert-circle spreads

Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.

How beautiful is night!


Go, Valentine

Go, Valentine, and tell that lovely maid

Whom fancy still will portray to my sight,

How here I linger in this sullen shade,

This dreary gloom of dull monastic night;

Say, that every joy of life remote

At evening's closing hour I quit the throng,

Listening in solitude the ring-dome's note,

Who pours like me her solitary song;

Say, that of her absence calls the sorrowing sigh;

Say, that of all her charms I love to speak,

In fancy feel the magic of her eye,

In fancy view the smile illume her cheek,

Court the lone hour when silence stills the grove,

And heave the sigh of memory and of love.