O day and night! O day and night! with rest abounding, The soothing sinking down on hard-earned holy rest, With grateful ease that grew from all the calm surrounding, A languid, dreamful ease, my soul became possessed. The hoarse sea-wind comes soughing, sighing, singing, Its constant message from the patient waves. While high above cathedral bells were ringing, Or falling voices chanted hymns of praise, And all the land seemed filled with peace and promised length of days. * * * * * O day and night! O day and night! once, all unheeding, By sun and summer wind with tender touch caressed, I wandered where the strains, the sacred strains, were pleading, And, kneeling in the fane, my thoughts to prayer addressed. And softly rose the murmur'd organ mystery, And swell'd around the colonnaded aisle, Where smiled the pictured saints of holy history On prostrate penitents who prayed the while: I could not pray there, but I felt that God Himself might smile. O day and night! O day and night! while I was kneeling There came the strangest sense of some loved presence near; A re-awakening rush of well-remembered feeling Thrill'd thro' me, held me still, with vague expectant fear. Half turn'd from me, there stood beside the altar, Where incense-clouds nigh veiled him from my sight, A fair-haired priest--my quicken'd heart-beats falter! Or is he priest, or is he acolyte, Or layman devotee who prays in novice robes bedight? O day and night! O day and night! whence comes this feeling? For all unreal seem day and night and life and death, And all unreal the hope that sets my senses reeling, And stills my pulse an instant, checks my lab'ring breath. Yet louder rolls the mighty organ thund'ring. And downward slopes a beam of light divine, The perfumed clouds are cleft: he looks up wond'ring-- Looks up--what does he there before the shrine? He could not give himself to God, for he is mine, is mine! O day and night! O day and night! I go forth trembling, He did not meet my eyes, he never saw my face. My bosom swells with joy and jealousy resembling A war of good and evil waged in a holy place. No longer soft the day, the sun in splendour Pours all his might upon this green incline; I lie and watch the cirrus clouds surrender, Their glowing forms to one hot kiss resign-- How could he give himself to God when he is mine, is mine?