Midnight Poem by Maria Gowen Brooks

'T IS now the hour of mirth, the hour of love,
The hour of melancholy. Night, as vain
Of her full beauty, seems to pause above,
That all may look upon her ere it wane.

The heavenly angel watched his subject's star
O'er all that's good and fair benignly smiling;
The sighs of wounded love he hears, from far;
Weeps that he cannot heal, and wafts a hope beguiling.

The nether earth looks beauteous as a gem;
High o'er her groves, in floods of moonlight laving,
The towering palm displays his silver stem,
The while his plumy leaves scarce in the breeze are waving.

The nightingale among his roses sleeps;
The soft-eyed doe in thicket deep is sleeping;
The dark green myrrh her tears of fragrance weeps,
And, every odorous spike in limpid dew is steeping.

Proud prickly cerea, now thy blossom 'scapes
Its cell; brief cup of light; and seems to say,
'I am not for gross mortals; blood of grapes —
And sleep for them! Come spirits, while ye may!'

A silent stream winds darkly through the shade,
And slowly gains the Tigris, where 't is lost;
By a forgotten prince, of old, 't was made,
And, in its course, full many a fragment crost

Of marble fairly carved; and by its side
Her golden dust the flaunting lotus threw
O'er her white sisters, throned upon the tide,
And queen of every flower that loves perpetual dew.