Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix

Night
By James Montgomery

Night is the time for rest:
How sweet, when labors close,
To gather round an aching breast
The curtain of repose:
Stretch the tired limbs, and lay thy head
Upon thy own delightful bed!

Night is the time for dreams:
The gay romance of life,
When truth that is and truth that seems,
Blend in fantastic strife;
Ah! visions less beguiling far
Than waking dreams by daylight are!

Night is the time for toil:
To plough the classic field,
Intent to find the buried spoil
Its wealthy furrows yield;
'Tis all is ours that age has sought,
That poets sang, or heroes wrought.

Night is the time to weep:
To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory, where sleep
The joys of other years;
Hopes that were angels in their birth,
But perished young, like things on earth.

Night is the time to watch:
On ocean's dark expanse,
To hail the Pleiades, or catch
The full moon's earliest glance,
That brings unto the home-sick mind
All we have loved and left behind.

Night is the time for care;
Brooding on hours misspent,
To see the spectre of despair
Come to our lonely tent;
Like Brutus 'midst his slumbering host,
Startled by Caesar's stately ghost.

Night is the time to muse:
Then from the eye the soul
Takes flight, and, soaring in her views,
Beyond the starry pole,
Describes an ampler universe,
The unwan of uncreated light.

Night is the time to pray;
Our Saviour oft withdrew
To desert mountains far away;
He rose with early dew,
Seal from the throng to haunts untrod,
And hold communion there with God.

Night is the time for death,
When, as around is peace,
Calmly to yield the parting breath;
From sin and suffering cease;
Think of heaven's bliss and give the sign,
To parting friends--such death be mine!