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The weary sun hath made a golden set, And by the bright track of his golden car, Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.

Now is the pleasant time,

The cool, the silent, save when silence yields
To the night-warbling bird, that now awake,

Shaks. Richard III. Tunes sweetest his love-labour'd song; now reigns
Full-orb'd the moon, and with more pleasing light

The midnight bell

Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth,
Sound one unto the drowsy race of night.
Shaks. King John.

'Tis now the very witching time of night; When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes

out

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Night with her sullen wings to double shade The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couch'd;

Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot And now wild beasts came forth the woods to roam.

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Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still giving to the young-cy'd cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Night's silent reign had robb'd the world of light;
To lend, in lieu, a greater benefit,
Repose and sleep; when ev'ry mortal breast
Whom care or grief permitted, took their rest.
May's Continuation of Lucan.

Quiet night, that brings
Rest to the labourer, is the outlaw's day,
In which he rises early to do wrong,
And when his work is ended dare not sleep.

Massinger.

Now glow'd the firmament

With livid sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in cloudy majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
Milton's Paradise Lost.

Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad:
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
'They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the woeful nightingale.
Milton's Paradise Lost.

The sun was sunk, and after him the star
Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring
Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter
'Twixt day and night, and now from end to end
Night's hemisphere had veil'd th' horizon round.
Milton's Paradise Lost.

Milton's Paradise Regained. The day is fled, and dismal night descends, Casting her sable arms around the world, And folding all within her sable grasp.

Hopkins's Pyrrhu

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Now sunk the sun; the closing hour of day
Came onward, mantled o'er with sober grey;
Nature in silence bid the world repose.

Parnell's Hermit.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor list'ning ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
Young's Night Thoughts
By day, the soul o'erborne by life's career,
Stunn'd by the din, and giddy with the glare,
Reels far from reason, jostled by the throng.
Young's Night Thoughts.

How is night's sable mantle labour'd o'er,
How richly wrought with attributes divine!
What wisdom shines! what love! this midnight
pomp,

This gorgeous arch, with golden worlds enlarg'd!
Built with divine ambition.

Young's Night Thoughts. This sacred shade and solitude, what is it? "Tis the felt presence of the deity. Few are the faults we flatter when alone, Vice sinks in her allurements, is ungilt, And looks, like other objects, black by night. By night an atheist half-believes a God.

Young's Night Thoughts.

Let Indians, and the gay, like Indians, fond

Of feather'd fopperies, the sun adore :

Darkness has more divinity for me;

The sun was set; the night came on apace, And falling dews bewet around the place; The bat takes airy rounds on leathern wings, And the hoarse owl his woeful dirges sings.

Gay's Shepherd's Week

As yet 't is midnight deep. The weary clouds,
Slow-meeting, mingle into solid gloom.
Now, while the drowsy world lies lost in sleep,
Let me associate with the serious night,
And contemplation her sedate compeer;
Let me shake off the intrusive cares of day,
And lay the meddling senses all aside.

Thomson's Seasons

In sable pomp, with all her starry train, The night resum'd her throne.

Precipitate and heavy o'er the world; At once extinguishing the sun.

Glover.

Mallett's Mustapha.

O, treach'rous night!

It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul The night look'd black, and boding darkness fell
To settle on herself, our point supreme!
There lies our theatre; there sits our judge.
Darkness the curtain drops o'er life's dull scene;
'Tis the kind hand of Providence stretcht out
'Twixt man and vanity: 't is reason's reign,
And virtue's too; these tutelary shades
Are man's asylum from the tainted throng.
Night is the good man's friend, and guardian too;
It no less rescues virtue, than inspires.

Young's Night Thoughts. How like a widow in her weeds, the night, Amid her glimmering tapers, silent sits! How sorrowful, how desolate, she weeps Perpetual dews, and saddens nature's scene. Young's Night Thoughts. The trembling stars See crimes gigantic, stalking through the gloom With front erect, that hide their head by day, And making night still darker by their deeds. Slumbering in covert, till the shades descend, Rapine and murder, link'd, now prowl for prey. Young's Night Thoughts. The sun went down in clouds, and seem'd to mourn The sad necessity of his return; The hollow wind, and melancholy rain, Or did, or was imagin'd to, complain: The tapers cast an inauspicious light; Stars there were none, and doubly dark the night. Young's Force of Religion. Now black, and deep the night begins to fall, A shade immense. Sunk in the quenching gloom, Magnificent and vast, are heaven and earth. Order confounded lies; all beauty void; Distinction lost; and gay variety One universal blot: such the power Of light, to kindle and create the whole.

Thou lend'st thy ready veil to ev'ry treason,
And teeming mischiefs thrive beneath thy shade.
Hill's Zara

How those fall'n leaves do rustle on the path,
With whisp'ring noise, as tho' the earth around me
Did utter secret things!

The distant river, too, bears to mine car
A dismal wailing. O mysterious night!
Thou art not silent; many tongues hast thou!
Joanna Baillie's De Montford.

No was the noon of night; and all was still,
Save where the sentinel paced on his rounds,
Humming a broken song. Along the camp
High flames the frequent fire. The warrior
Franks,

On the hard earth extended, rest their limbs
Fatigued, their spears lay by them, and the shield
Pillow'd the helmed head: secure they slept,
And busy fancy in her dream renew'd
The fight of yesterday.

Southey

How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air, No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,

Breaks the serene heaven:

In full-orh'd glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.

Beneath her steady ray

The desert circle spreads,

Like the round ocean, gird'ed with the sky
How beautiful is night!

Thomson's Seasons.

Southey's Thalava

Behold the world

Rests, and her tir'd inhabitants have paus'd
From trouble and turmoil. The widow now
Has ceas'd to weep, and her twin-orphans lie
Lock'd in each arm, partakers of her rest.
The man of sorrow has forgot his woes;
The outcast that his head is shelterless,
His griefs unshar'd. The mother tends no more
Her daughter's dying slumbers, but surpris'd
With heaviness, and sunk upon her couch,
Dreams of her bridals. Even the hectic lull'd
On death's lean arm to rest, in visions wrapt,
Crowning with hope's bland wreath his shuddering

nurse,

Poor victim! smiles. - Silence and deep repose
Reign o'er the nations; and the warning voice
Of nature utters audibly within
The general moral; - tells us that repose,
Death-like as this, but of far longer pain,
Is coming on us — that the weary crowds,
Who now enjoy a temporary calm,
Shall soon taste lasting quiet, wrapt around
With grave-clothes; and their aching restless
heads

Mouldering in holes and corners unobserved
Till the last trump shall break their sullen sleep.
Henry Kirke White.

The night comes calmly forth,
Bringing sweet rest upon the wings of even:
The golden wain folls round the silent north,
And carth is slumbering 'neath the smiles of
heaven.

Another day is added to the map

Bowring.

Of buried ages. Lo! the beauteous moon,
Like a fair shepherdess, now comes abroad
With the full flock of stars, that roam around
The azure meads of heaven. And, oh! how
charm'd,

Beneath her loveliness, creation looks;

Far gleaming hills, and light in-weaving streams, And sleeping boughs with dewy lustre clothed, And green-hair'd valleys,—all in glory dress'd, Make up the pageantries of night.

Robert Montgomery.

"Tis night, the spectred hour is nigh; Pensive I hear the moaning blast Passing with sad sepulchral sigh,

My lyre that hangs neglected by,
And seems to mourn for pleasures past

How oft a cloud, with envious veil,

Obscures yon bashful light, Wnich seems so modestly to steal Along the waste of night!

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Just one look before I sleep,
Just one parting glance to keep
On my heart and on my brain
Every line and feature plain,
In sweet hopes that they may be
Present in those dreams to me,

Moore. Which the gentle night-hour brings
Ever on her starry wings.

Вуголь

Miss Landon's Poems.

J. Montgomery,

Night is a lively masquerade of day.

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Will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers. Bailey's Festus.

Night hath made many bards, she is so lovely. Bailey's Festus.

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude

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That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon Oh, Night! most beautiful, most rare!

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Sleep chains the earth; the bright stars glide on high,

Filling with one effulgent smile the sky;
And all is hush'd so still, so silent there,
That one might hear an angel wing the air.
Mrs. Lewis's Child of the Sea.

The last red gold had melted from the sky,
Where the sweet sunset linger'd soft and warm,
And starry night was gathering silently

The jewell'd mantle round her regal form; While the invisible fingers of the breeze Shook the young blossoms lightly from the trees. Phabe Carey.

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O nightingale, that on yon blooming spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart doth fill, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May. Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day, First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill, Portend success in love; oh! if Jove's will Have link'd that amorous power to thy soft lay Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh, As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet hadst no reason why: Whether the muse or love call the 's mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

Milton

The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise, and true perfection!
Shaks. Merchant of Venice.
Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most inusical, most melancholy.

Milton's Il Penseroso.
The melancholy Philomel,

Thus perch'd all night alone in shady groves,
Tunes her soft voice to sad complaints of love,
Making her life one great harmonious woe.
Southern's Disappointment.
-Hark! the nightingale begins his song,
"Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
A melancholy bird! O idle thought!
In nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierc'd

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
(And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself.
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrows,) he, and such as he,
First nam'd these notes a melancholy strain.

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But by your fathers' worth if yours you rate,
Count me those only that were good and great
Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood
Go! and pretend your family is young;
Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?

Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Pope's Essay on Man
Whoe'er amidst the sons

Of reason, valour, liberty, and virtue,
Displays distinguish'd merit, is a noble
Of nature's own creating. Such have risen,
Sprung from the dust; or where had been our
honours ?
Thomson's Coriolanus

Look round

Among the titled great ones of the world;
Do they not spring from some proud monarch'
flatterer,

Some favourite mistress, or ambitious minister,
The ruin of his country, while their blood
Rolls down through many a fool, through many a

villain,

Vain-glorious man, when fluttering wind does blow To its now proud possessors ?

In his light wings, is lifted up to sky;
The scorn of knighthood and true chivalry,
To think, without desert of gentle deed
And noble worth, to be advanced high,
Such praise is shame; but honour, virtue's meed,
Joth bear the fairest flower in honourable seed.

Frances's Eugenia Ev'n to the dullest peasant standing by, Who fasten'd still on him a wondering eye, He seem'd the master spirit of the land. Joanna Bailhe

There were twelve peers

Spenser's Fairy Queen. Like Charlemagne's—and all such peers in look
And intellect, that neither eyes nor ears
For commoners had ever them mistook.

Should vice expect to 'scape rebuke, Because its owner is a duke?

1

Swift.

Вутов

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