As softly fall the autumn nights The city blossoms into lights; Now here, now there, a sudden spark Sputters the twilight's light-in-dark; Afar a glimmering crescent shakes; The gloom across the valley breaks In glow-worms; swiftly, strangely fair, A bridge of lamps leaps through the air, And hangs in night; and sudden shines The long street's splendour-fretted lines. Intense and bright that fiery bloom Upon the bosom of the gloom; At length the starry clusters fail, Afar the lustrous crescents pale, Till all the wondrous pageant dies In gray light of damp-dawning skies. High stands that lonely mountain ground Above each babbling human sound; Yet from its place afar it sees Night scared by angry furnaces; The lighting up of city proud, The brightness o'er it in the cloud. The foolish people never seek Wise counsel from that silent peak, Though from its height it looks abroad All-seeing as the eye of God, Haunting the peasant on the down, The workman in the busy town; Though from the closely-curtain'd dawn The day is by the mountain drawn-- Whether the slant lines of the rain Fill high the brook and shake the pane; Or noonday reapers, wearied, halt On sheaves beneath a blinding vault, Unshaded by a vapour's fold-- Though from that mountain summit old The cloudy thunder breaks and rolls, Through deep reverberating souls; Though from it comes the angry light, Whose forky shiver scars the sight, And rends the shrine from floor to dome, And leaves the gods without a home. And ever in that under-world, Round which the weary clouds are furl'd, The cry of one that buys and sells, The laughter of the bridal bells Clear-breaking from cathedral towers; The pedlar whistling o'er the moors; The sun-burnt reapers, merry corps, With stocks behind and grain before; The huntsman cheering on his hounds, Build up one sound of many sounds. As instruments of diverse tone, The organ's temple-shaking groan, Proud trumpet, cymbal's piercing cry, Build one consummate harmony: As smoke that drowns the city's spires, Is fed by twice a million fires; As midnight draws her complex grief From sob and wail of bough and leaf: And on those favourable days When earth is free from mist and haze, And heaven is silent as an ear Down-leaning, loving words to hear, Stray echoes of the world are blown Around those pinnacles of stone-- The saddest sound beneath the sun, Earth's thousand voices blent in one.