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NIGHT.
And lovely thou, when gentle springtime comesAnd calls the blossoms to their woodland homes.How glorious art thou, when the summer's skyHath caught the deep glance of her laughing eye!How peaceful thou, when quiet autumn comes,The time when birds return to southern homes;When breezes hum a low and sad refrain,As if it were a parting full of pain,When proud trees drop their bright-hued garlands downUpon the barren earth so cold and brown!The blossoms perish 'neath the touch of frost;The glories of the summer all are lost.Majestic is thy reign where northern skiesAre lit with luster of auroral dyes;And fancy whispers that like fairy-land—Save that there come no breezes mild and bland—Must be those arctic realms, when over allTheir icebergs and their glaciers moonbeams fall.And then our own broad prairies love thee too,On flow'rs and grasses dropping gentle dew.Thy reign is bright in far-off southern clime,In lovely lands of music and of rhyme.And if so fair lit by the sunbeam dyes,How glorious, too, must be the midnight skiesOf Italy, that land of deathless fame,Where long ago Art's high-souled children came,
