night

The heroic stars spending themselves,
Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle,
They must burn out at length like used candles;
And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes.
There is the stuff for an epic poem--
This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle--
We don't know enough, we'll never know.
Oh happy Homer, taking the stars and the Gods for granted.


Submitted by Holt

The night darkens fast & the shadows darken,
Clouds & the rain gather about mine house,
Only the wood-dove moans, hearken, O hearken!
The moan of the wood-dove in the rain-wet boughs.

Loneliness & the night! The night is lonely
Star-covered the night takes to a tender breast
Wrapping them in her veil these dark hours only
The weary, the bereaved, the dispossessed.

When will it lighten? Once the night was kindly
Nor all her hours went by leaden & long.

In all its raucous impudence
Life writhes, cavorts in pallid light,
With little cause or consequence;
And when, with darkling skies, the night

Casts over all its sensuous balm,
Quells hunger's pangs and, in like wise,
Quells shame beneath its pall of calm,
"Aha, at last!" the Poet sighs.

"My mind, my bones, yearn, clamoring
For sweet repose unburdening.
Heart full of dire, funeral thought,

I will lie out; your folds will cling
About me: veils of shadow wrought,

If I could have put you in my heart,
If but I could have wrapped you in myself,
How glad I should have been!
And now the chart
Of memory unrolls again to me
The course of our journey here, before we had to part.

And oh, that you had never, never been
Some of your selves, my love, that some
Of your several faces I had never seen!
And still they come before me, and they go,
And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.

And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,

It is time for me to go, mother; I am going.
When in the paling darkness of the lonely dawn you stretch out
your arms for your baby in the bed, I shall say, "Baby is not
here!"-mother, I am going.
I shall become a delicate draught of air and caress you and
I shall be ripples in the water when you bathe, and kiss you and
kiss you again.
In the gusty night when the rain patters on the leaves you
will hear my whisper in your bed, and my laughter will flash with
the lightning through the open window into your room.

Fytte the First: wherein it shall be shown how the Truth is too mighty a Drug for such as be of feeble temper

The King was sick. His cheek was red
And his eye was clear and bright;
He ate and drank with a kingly zest,
And peacefully snored at night.

But he said he was sick, and a king should know,
And doctors came by the score.
They did not cure him. He cut off their heads
And sent to the schools for more.

At last two famous doctors came,
And one was as poor as a rat,

Why do I see these empty boats, sailing on airy seas?
One haunted me the whole night long, swaying with every breeze,
Returning always near the eaves, or by the skylight glass:
There it will wait me many weeks, and then, at last, will pass.
Each soul is haunted by a ship in which that soul might ride
And climb the glorious mysteries of Heaven's silent tide
In voyages that change the very metes and bounds of Fate —
O empty boats, we all refuse, that by our windows wait!

1 Trim the sails the weird stars under—
2 Past the iron hail and thunder,
3 Past the mystery and the wonder,
4 Sails our fated bark;
5 Past the myriad voices hailing,
6 Past the moaning and the wailing,
7 The far voices failing, failing,
8 Drive we to the dark.

9 Past the headlands grim and sombre,
10 Past the shores of mist and slumber,
11 Leagues on leagues no man may number,
12 Soundings none can mark;
13 While the olden voices calling,

Eternal Power, of earth and air!
Unseen, yet seen in all around,
Remote, but dwelling everywhere,
Though silent, heard in every sound.
If e'er thine ear in mercy bent,
When wretched mortals cried to Thee,
And if, indeed, Thy Son was sent,
To save lost sinners such as me:

Then hear me now, while, kneeling here,
I lift to thee my heart and eye,
And all my soul ascends in prayer,
Oh, give me -­ give me Faith! I cry.

Without some glimmering in my heart,
I could not raise this fervent prayer;

When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights; --
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore; --
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore: --

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black night, --
A Meteor strange and bright: --
Hither and thither the vision strays,
A single lurid light.