I heard the trailing garments of the Night
    Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
    From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
    Stoop o’er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
    As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
    The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night
    Like some old poet’s rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
    My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,—
    From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
    What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
    And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
    Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
    The best-beloved Night!

By Heaven! it is a shameful thing
That, in this age of deepening might,
There live so few whose souls dare cling
Forever to the right!
By Heaven! it is a crying sin
That, in this hour of ripening thought,
Where so much greatness lies within,
So little is outwrought.

The world is full of puling fools
Who prate of love in sickening rhymes,
Or bring stale tomes of trusty rules
To curb the chafing times;
But where be they whose prophet-souls
Outlooking on life's Ocean waves,
Do warn us of the rocks and shoals
Which else become our graves?

What care we for our father's creed?
What reck we of the ancient themes?
Is Truth less true in newer deeds
Than in decrepit dreams?
All honor to our brave old Sires—
The unforgotten, worthy dead;
Yet shall our loftier desires
Be on their dulness fed?

Give us new Truth altho' it break
Upon us with the lightning's flash!
Give us new Truth! The Nations quake
Beneath the shifting crash.
Give us new Truth! Our souls despise
This blinding rush of deadly strife.
Past forms of Truth are present lies
Which canker all our life.

Therefore, new Truth! And let it burst
Like red-hot thunderbolts on those
In whom this fair world stands a curse
With such a hell of woes!
New Truth! Which ever more shall right
Earth's wronged and patient multitude;
And robe us all in rare delight
Of deep and earnest good.