night (n.)
night (v.)
night (adv.)
- ceaselessly
- continually
- continuously
- darkness
- endlessly
- evening
- incessantly
- nightly
- unceasingly
- unendingly
night (adj.)
The whitewash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door;
The chest, contriv'd a double debt to pay,—
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
A night-cap deck'd his brows instead of bay,—
A cap by night, a stocking all the day.
And o'er the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
Thro' all the world she follow'd him.
By night an atheist half believes a God.
The sky is changed,—and such a change! O night
And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder.
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.
With grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air.
When Freedom from her mountain-height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure, celestial white
With streakings of the morning light.
Flag of the free heart's hope and home!
By angel hands to valour given!
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?
The whitewash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door;
The chest, contriv'd a double debt to pay,—
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
'T was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,—not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either,—black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand.
I must become a borrower of the night
For a dark hour or twain.
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away
In statue-like repose.
We watch'd her breathing through the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,
Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.
These blessed candles of the night.
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:
At which the universal host up sent
A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.
He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
The night cometh when no man can work.
The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn,
Till danger's troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.
When night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
But oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd,
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.
Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?
The deep of night is crept upon our talk,
And nature must obey necessity.
Now night descending, the proud scene was o'er,
But lived in Settle's numbers one day more.
I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand an end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
Where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal anarchy amidst the noise
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand;
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,
Strive here for mast'ry.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smil'd!
Except I be by Sylvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale.
The dews of summer nights did fall,
The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall
And many an oak that grew thereby.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
From toil he wins his spirits light,
From busy day the peaceful night;
Rich, from the very want of wealth,
In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.
Gloomy as night he stands.
Orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night.
Gude nicht, and joy be wi' you a'.
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
Now had Aurora displayed her mantle over the blushing skies, and dark night withdrawn her sable veil.
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls,
And makes night hideous;—answer him, ye owls!
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee: I 'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous, and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, or speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
This will last out a night in Russia,
When nights are longest there.
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.
But what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.
Innumerable as the stars of night,
Or stars of morning, dewdrops which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower.
This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
The night is long that never finds the day.
Night is the time to weep,
To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory where sleep
The joys of other years.
This sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day.
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn.
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day
Whose conquering ray
May chase these fogs;
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day!
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day!
Light will repay
The wrongs of night;
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day!
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, "Behold!"
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
Calm on the listening ear of night
Come Heaven's melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!
For many a day, and many a dreadful night,
Incessant lab'ring round the stormy cape.
You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light;
You common people of the skies,—
What are you when the moon shall rise?
The cold winds swept the mountain-height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And 'mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snows she press'd,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
My native land, good night!
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
'T is a naughty night to swim in.
Some say no evil thing that walks by night,
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time,
No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
Days that need borrow
No part of their good morrow
From a fore-spent night of sorrow.
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?
Oh when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil nor night of waking.
Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken.
Tho' lost to sight, to mem'ry dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope my heart can cheer,—
The hope to meet again.
Oh fondly on the past I dwell,
And oft recall those hours
When, wand'ring down the shady dell,
We gathered the wild-flowers.
Yes, life then seem'd one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To mem'ry thou art dear.
Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light,
And wish that thou wert by.
I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly lov'd,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime,
As thro' the fields we rov'd.
Yes, life then seem'd one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To mem'ry thou art dear.
O, I have passed a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days.
The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire.
Oh pilot, 't is a fearful night!
There's danger on the deep.
The dews of summer nights did fall,
The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall
And many an oak that grew thereby.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world.
Life! we 've been long together
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'T is hard to part when friends are dear,—
Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not "Good night," but in some brighter clime
Bid me "Good morning."
Fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.
Then black despair,
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
O, I have passed a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days.
So we 'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night.
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. 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 quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born.
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men.
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell.
Nor sink those stars in empty night:
They hide themselves in heaven's own light.
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.
There was a jolly miller once,
Lived on the river Dee;
He worked and sung from morn till night:
No lark more blithe than he.
Except I be by Sylvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale.
This is the night
That either makes me or fordoes me quite.
She wore a wreath of roses
The night that first we met.
And smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye,
So priketh hem nature in hir corages;
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
Fly not yet; 't is just the hour
When pleasure, like the midnight flower
That scorns the eye of vulgar light,
Begins to bloom for sons of night
And maids who love the moon.
To all, to each, a fair good-night,
And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept
Were toiling upward in the night.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.
In the dead vast and middle of the night.
A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
Watchman, what of the night?
Macb. What is the night?
L. Macb. Almost at odds with morning, which is which.
Night, when deep sleep falleth on men.
Do not drop in for an after-loss.
Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scap'd this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purpos'd overthrow.
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
'T is now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.
With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change,—all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful ev'ning mild; then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glist'ring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful ev'ning mild, nor silent night
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.
For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night?
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have passed a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days.
Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
A night-cap deck'd his brows instead of bay,—
A cap by night, a stocking all the day.
And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.
