Sonnets. Night

INTO the darkness and the hush of night

Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,

And with it fade the phantoms of the day,

The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light.

The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,

The unprofitable splendor and display,

The agitations, and the cares that prey

Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight.

The better life begins; the world no more

Molests us; all its records we erase

From the dull commonplace book of our lives,

That like a palimpsest is written o’er

With trivial incidents of time and place,

And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.