"It is that hour when dusky night
Comes gathering o're departing light,
When hue by hue and ray by ray,
Thine eye may watch it waste away,
Until thou canst no more behold
The faded tints of pallid gold
And soft descended the shades of night,
As did those hues so purely bright;
And in the blue sky, star by star,
Shines out, like happiness afar;
A wilderness of worlds! - To well
In one, with those we have loved well
Where bliss indeed! - The waters flow
Gurgling, in darkest hue below,
And 'gainst the shore the ripple breaks
As from its cave, the east wind wakes,
But lo! where Dian's crest on high appears,
Faint as the memory of departing years.
NIGHT
The moon is gone; and thus go those we love;
The night winds wail; and thus for them we mourn;
The stars look down; thus spirits from above
Hallow the mourners' tears upon the urn.
Some thoughts are all of joy, and some of love;
Mine end in tears - they're welcome - let them flow
……………………………… We look around,
But vainly look for those who formed a part
Of us, as we of them, and whom we wore
Like gems in bezels, in the heart's deep core.
Where are they now? - gone to that "narrow cell"
Whose gloom no lamp hath broken, nor shall break
Whose secrets never spirit come to tell: -
Oh that their day might dawn, for them they would awake
DAY
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the stars look down
From guest D McKeown (contact)
Is this the origin of the title of A.J.Cronin's novel? -
This is a touching poem about the entrance into death. Here, the dying person is not urged to fight the process, and there is a multi-layered picture given of the mourners. I love the line, "mine end in tears - they're welcome - let them flow." This works for me because 1)often men are not expected to cry in public, yet this confirms that the man of this poem does not care about social form. The death of someone special needs to be expressed. 2) there is something about the construction of this line, perhaps the spacing and the brevity, that just gets to me. I like the idea of welcoming the tears and encouraging them to flow. Perhaps it's the addressing to the tears that I find attractive.
There are lines are are beautifully expressed and worth spending time lingering over.
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