How strange at night to wake <br />And watch, while others sleep, <br />Till sight and hearing ache <br />For objects that may keep <br />The awful inner sense <br />Unroused, lest it should mark <br />The life that haunts the emptiness <br />And horror of the dark! <br />How strange at night the bay <br />Of dogs, how wild the note <br />Of cocks that scream for day, <br />In homesteads far remote; <br />How strange and wild to hear <br />The old and crumbling tower, <br />Amid the darkness, suddenly <br />Take tongue and speak the hour! <br />Albeit the love-sick brain <br />Affects the dreary moon, <br />Ill things alone refrain <br />From life's nocturnal swoon: <br />Men melancholy mad, <br />Beasts ravenous and sly, <br />The robber, and the murderer, <br />Remorse, with lidless eye. <br />The nightingale is gay, <br />For she can vanquish night; <br />Dreaming, she sings of day <br />Notes that make darkness bright; <br />But when the refluent gloom <br />Saddens the gaps of song, <br />Men charge on her the dolefulness, <br />And call her crazed with wrong.<br /><br />Coventry Patmore<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-and-sleep/
