Verses (Baughan)/Light and Night
LIGHT AND NIGHT
Light! Light! Light!
Mother of the wide-ey’d flowers,
Mother of glad lips and bright
Dancing feet of the noontide hours,
Dancing with delight!
Oh, the joy, the rapture strong,
Thrilling thro’ the entrancéd air,
When thy glory rides along
Heaven’s high rampart bare!
Mother of ecstasy, Mother of might,
Come, sweet Light!
Light, fierce Light!
O intolerable gaze,
O unstay’d insatiate blight,
Battening thy relentless blaze
On the roots of sight!
Mercy! Mercy! Mind and heart
Writhe beneath the unswerving fire!
Mercy, mercy, Light! Depart,
Thou first-begot of Ire!
O for dulness, darkness, Night!
Hence, dread Light!
Darkness dear!
Come, Consoler, softly laying,
Over parched lives and sere,
Dusk of dewy pinions, saying,
“Rest ye! I am here.”
Hands lie folded, hearts grow deep,
Thro’ hot eyelids, many a tear,
Balmy, gradual, doth creep,
Heralds of the cool-hand Sleep
Gliding slowly near.
What hath Peace to do with Light?
Come, sweet Night
Darkness drear!
Dungeon vast of voiceless gloom!
Blindfold, deaf and dumb with fear,
Like stark corpses in a tomb
Mouldering, lie we here;
While the stealthy blackness winds
Wormlike round each rotting limb,
And with slimy torpor binds
Mildew’d hearts and stagnant minds
In corruption grim.
Mercy! Give us mercy, Night!
Give us Light!
Nay, but what shall satisfy?
—This: the swift alternate racing
When the sunlit shadows fly
From the shadowy sunlight’s chasing
Footsteps following nigh.
Broken darkness, broken light,
Knowledge knit with mystery,
Glory temper’d with a sigh—
Man’s inconstant spirit-sight
Needs a shifting sky;
Joy, with sorrow; wrong, with right;
Light, with Night!