The Night by Herbert Trench (1901)
Herbert Trench's "The Night" describes a lover setting aside the branches over a dark Door after years of longing. A woman comes to him, calm, with sea-like hair and a white breast. He is transfigured and sings, then falls silent in awe, and as they tremble together the world sinks away.
By Herbert Trench · First published 1901 · Genre: Romantic poetry, Love poetry, Lyric poetry · 214 words
First lines
I put aside the branches / That clothe the Door in gloom; / A glow-worm lit the pathway / And a lamp out of her room / Shook down a stifled greeting: / How could it greet aright / The thirst of years like deserts / That led up to this night?
But she, like sighing forests, / Stole on me -- full of rest, / Her hair was like the sea's wave, / Whiteness was in her breast, -- / (_So does one come, at night, upon a wall of roses._)
As in a stone of crystal / The cloudy web and flaw
Turns, at a flash, to rainbows, / Wing'd I became -- I saw / I sang; -- but human singing / Ceased, in a burning awe.
Similar titles
- Forest Lovers by Marie Van Vorst
- Venus Urania by Thomas Gordon Hake
- August Night by Sara Teasdale
- A Day Dream by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- The Tresses Of The Hair by W. B. Yeats
- The Summons by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Genres
- Romantic poetry — The poem centers on intense, idealized love and longing, with the speaker's thirst for a beloved, a moment of union, and the dissolving of the self into the beloved's presence, all hallmarks of the Romantic lyric tradition.
- Love poetry — The entire poem is an erotic and emotional account of a meeting between lovers, from the first sight of the woman to the mutual trembling and the world sinking away at the close.
- Lyric poetry — It is a short, first-person, emotionally concentrated song-like poem in stanzas that expresses the speaker's inner feeling rather than telling a story.
- Mystical poetry — The speaker's transformation into a winged being, the rainbow-flash of insight, the holy-prayer stillness, and the dissolution of the ordinary world evoke a visionary or mystical experience of transcendence.
Tags
love poetry · lyric poem · night · nocturnal tryst · lovers' reunion · longing and desire · years of waiting · sensual love · ecstatic union · rapture · transfiguration · awe
What this Textopian page supports
The Night is listed on Textopian as a poem by Herbert Trench, dated 1901 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Herbert Trench
- Date: 1901 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Romantic poetry, Love poetry, Lyric poetry, Mystical poetry, Symbolist poetry
- Length: 214 words
- Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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