Explore "Night" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Lo! where the car of Day down slopes of flame / On burnished axle quits the drowsy skies! / And as his snorting steeds of glowing brass / Rush 'neath the earth, a glimmering dust of gold / From their fierce hoofs o'er heaven's azure meads / Rolls to yon star that burns beneath the moon. / With solemn tread and holy-stoled, star-bound, / The Night steps in, sad votaress, like a nun, / To pace lone corridors of th' ebon-arched sky. / How sad! how beautiful! her raven locks / Pale-filleted with stars that dance their sheen / On her deep, holy eyes, and woo to sleep, / Sleep or the easeful slumber of white Death! / How calm o'er this great water, in its flow / Silent and vast, smoothes yon cold sister sphere, / Her lucid chasteness feathering the wax-white foam! / As o'er a troubled brow falls calm content: / As clear-eyed chastity in this bleak world / Tinges and softens all the darker dross.
/ See, where the roses blow at the wood's edge / In many a languid bloom, bowed to the moon / And the dim river's lisp; sleep droops their lids / With damask lashes trimmed and fragile rayed, / Which the mad, frolic bee -- rough paramour -- / So often kissed beneath th' enlivening sun. / How cool the breezes touch the tired head / With unseen fingers long and soft! and there / From its white couch of thorn-tree blossoms sweet, / Pillowed with one milk cluster, floating, swooning, / Drops the low nocturne of a dreaming bird, / _Ave Maria_, nun-like, slumb'ring sung. / See, there the violet mound in many an eye, / A deep-blue eye, meek, delicate, and sad, / As Sorrow's own sad eyes, great with far dreams, / When haltingly she bends o'er Lethe's waves / Falt'ring to drink, and falt'ring still remains, / The Night with feet of moon-tinged mist swept o'er / Them now, but as she passed she bent and kissed / Each modest orb that selfless hung as tho' / Thought-freighted low; then groped her train of jet / Which billowing by did merely waft the sound / Of a brief gust to each wild violet, / To kiss each eye and laugh; then shed a tear / Upon each downward face which nestled there.