THE MESSAGE OF NIGHT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10404, 31 March 1897, Page 3

THE MESSAGE OF NIGHT.

I stand beneath the night's wide vast, The awful curtains, dim, outrolled, And know time but a tempest Mast, And life a thing the band may hold, A thing the Nubian, dark, nay shut In his closed palm-grasp, black and rude, Like dust in kernel of a nut MM vasts of night's infinitude. And reason whispers-Why debate A moment's thought, why breathe this breath For all are gone, the low, tin great; And mighty lord of all is Death. • - Yea, Egypt built her ruined dream, And Ureece knew beauty's perfect bliss, Then Science fanned her taper gleam— And all for this, and all for this , ; That when the fires of Time burned out, The earth a barren ball should roll, With wrinkled winter wrapped about, And night eterne from pole to pole. And all the dreams of seers and king. The pomps and pageants of the past, The loves and vain im iginings, Ground into glacial dust at last. . Ah I no such creed, my soul, for thee. as, underneath the night's wide bars, They speak with love's infinity- i God's wondrous angels of the stars. And something in my heart, some light, Some splendour science cannot weigh— Beats round the shores of this dim night The surges of a'mightier day. Though all the loves of those who loved Be vanished into empty air. • " Though all the dreams of ages proved But wrecks of beautiful despair. ' ( Though all the dust of those who fought . Be scattered to the midnight's main, . '' No noble life was lived for naught, ■ M '- , No martyr death was died in vain. .<.""' . .'. '~ .- William Wilfred Campbell. Look jn our window whenever you have an opportunity— a journal of the fashions. Subscription free.— and Co,, hatters, mewejii Qu«B<Bti'eet,]-(Adyt.) '~