Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches, Like eyeless insects in a murky pond That out and out this city stretches, Away, away, and there is no beyond. No larger earth, no loftier heaven, No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet, Even to us sometimes is given Visions of things we otherwhiles forget. Some day is done, its labour ended, And as we brood at windows high, A steady wind from far descended, Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky; There are the empty waiting spaces, We watch, we watch, unwinking, pale and dumb, Till gliding up with noiseless paces Night sweeps o'er all the wide arch: Night has come. Not that sick false night of the city, Lurid and low and yellow and obscene, But mother Night, pure, full of pity, The star-strewn Night, blue, potent and serene. O, as we gaze the clamour ceases, The turbid world around grows dim and small, The soft-shed influence releases Our shrouded spirits from their dusty pall. No more we hear the turbulent traffic, Not scorned but unremembered is the day; The Night, all luminous and seraphic, Has brushed its heavy memories away. The great blue Night so clear and kindly, The little stars so wide-eyed and so still, Open a door for souls that blindly Had wandered, tunnelling the endless hill; They draw the long-untraversed portal, Our souls slip out and tremble and expand, The immortal feels for the immortal, The eternal holds the eternal by the hand. Impalpably we are led and lifted, Softly we shake into the gulf of blue, The last environing veil is rifted And lost horizons float into our view. Lost lands, lone seas, lands that afar gleam With a miraculous beauty, faint yet clear, Forgotten lands of night and star-gleam, Seas that are somewhere but that are not here. Borne without effort or endeavour, Swifter and more ethereal than the wind, In level track we stream, whilst ever The fair pale panorama rolls behind. Now fleets below a trancèd moorland, A sweep of glimmering immobility; Now craggy cliff and dented foreland Pass back and there beyond unfolds the sea. Now wastes of water heaving, drawing, Great darkling tracts of patterned restlessness, With whitened waves round rough rocks mawing And licking islands in their fierce caress. Now coasts with capes and ribboned beaches Set silent 'neath the canopy sapphirine, And estuaries and river reaches Phantasmal silver in the night's soft shine. * * * * *