A Nocturnal Reverie

IN such a night, when every louder wind

Is to its distant cavern safe confin’d;

And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,

And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;

Or from some tree, fam’d for the owl’s delight,

She, hollowing clear, directs the wand’rers right:

In such a night, when passing clouds give place,

Or thinly vail the Heav’ns mysterious face;

When in some river, overhung with green,

The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen;

When freshen’d grass now bears itself upright,

And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,

Whence springs the woodbind, and the bramble-rose,

And where the sleepy cowslip shelter’d grows;

Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,

Yet checquers still with red the dusky brakes:

When scatter’d glow-worms, but in twilight fine,

Shew trivial beauties watch their hour to shine;

Whilst Salisb ’ry stands the test of every light,

In perfect charms and perfect virtue bright:

When odours, which declin’d repelling day,

Thro’ temperate air uninterrupted stray;

When darken’d groves their softest shadows wear

And falling waters we distinctly hear;

When thro’ the gloom more venerable shows

Some ancient fabrick, awful in repose,

While sunburnt hills their swarthy looks conceal,

And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale:

When the loos’d horse now, as his pasture leads,

Comes slowly grazing thro’ th’ adjoining meads,

Whose stealing pace, and lengthen’d shade we fear,

Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear:

When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,

And unmolested kine rechew the cud;

When curlews cry beneath the village walls,

And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;

Their short-liv’d jubilee the creatures keep,

Which but endures, whilst tyrant-man do’s sleep:

When a sedate consent the spirit feels,

And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals;

But silent musings urge the mind to seek

Something, too high for syllables to speak;

Till the free soul to a compos’dness charm’d,

Finding the elements of rage disarm’d,

O’er all below a solemn quiet grown,

Joys in th’ inferior world, and thinks it like her own:

In such a night let me abroad remain,

Till morning breaks, and all ’s confus’d again;

Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renew’d,

Or pleasures, seldom reach’d, again pursu’d.

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