A Summer Night / John Todhunter

A Summer Night

It is a night too silver-sweet for sleep,
The stars shine softly bright, and delicate airs
Play through my open window languidly,
With summer perfume on their gentle wings,
Robbed from deep-bosomed roses. Yonder streak
Of paly gold marks where the sun went down
In burning glory; and now the rising moon
Half hides her blood-red orb behind those elms
That whisper to each other. Silent it is.
Most silent, save when from the meadow deep
The corncrake calls her mate, or far away
A watch-dog bays; so silent that you seem
To hear the growth of all things, as the dew
Sinks down refreshfuUy, and seem to feel
The throb of Nature's pulses, and the wings
Of Time stealthily waved with downy beat.

The starlight silence draws me: I must roam —
Past my still garden; past the pastures low
Breathing of meadow-sweet; up this dim lane;
Into the dewy woods, led by the light
Of the new-risen moon. A sudden joy —
A shudder of deep deHght — thrills to my heart,
To be alone, hid in the nightly haunt
Of that fair Spirit whose permeant essence fills
Each tiniest leaf with living beauty. Here,
Where the wood-smells are sweetest, where the dew
Lies pearliest on the balmy eglantine,
And each clear drop a soul of fragrance takes
From curvy trumpets of the woodbine trails
Wreathing dark-glossed hollies ; where the flowers
Of maiden-pure wild roses strew the grass
With dehcate petals — might one suddenly come
On some quaint scene of elfin revelry.

~~
John Todhunter (1839-1916)
from Laurella, and other poems, 1876

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

John Todhunter biography

Mathew Schwartz, Summer Night in Finland, August 2016. 

CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.