own attitude of mind. Here is one, in which the tendency,

so common to us all, to call to mind at night the former hap

py scenes of life, is dwelt upon:

1

"'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel

We once have loved, though love is at an end:

The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal,
Though friendless now will dream it had a friend.

Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side,

To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere,

The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride,

And flies unconscious o'er each backward year."

In another passage he says of Childe Harold,

"Many a joy could he from Night's soft presence glean.

And not only joy comes from the night, but like all of us,

"2

he feels its strengthening calm, and says of night that it is

the time

12

"when the soul can flee,

And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain

Childe Harold, Canto ii. Stanza 23, 24.
Childe Harold, Canto ii. Stanza 70.

:

of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain, " 1

Sometimes, though more rarely, the simple beauty and gen ness of night take all his attention. This is more ofte

true of his descriptions of the evening, like the follow

"It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;

It is the hour when lover's vows

Seem sweet in every whispered word;

And gentle winds, and waters near,

Make music to the lonely ear.

Each flower the dews have lightly wet,

And in the sky the stars are met,

And on the wave is deeper blue,

And on the leaf a browner hue,

And in the heaven that clear obscure,

So softly dark, and darkly pure,

Which follows the decline of day,

As twilight melts beneath the moon away."

Again he expresses, more lightly than his usual tone, sir

1

Childe Harold, Canto iii, stanza 72. 2 Parisina, vol.v.p.339.

pleasure in the scenes and sounds of night. This we find in one of his half-humorous poems, as we might expect, not in the graver musings of Childe Harold:- I

"'Tis sweet to hear

At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep

The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,

By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep;

'Tis sweet to see the evening star appear;

'Tis sweet to listen as the night-winds creep

From leaf to leaf."

But occasionally the influence of the night is stronger:- 2

"The hour

Was that in which the heart is always full,

And, having o'er itself no further power,

Prompts deeds eternity cannot annul."

Once Byron speaks of the night as "conscious"; and again, with an almost superstitious feeling, he gives it something akin to personality:

3