"What of the night, colleen, what of the night?" 
Oh, fires are red and the snows are white: 
But on one dear hearth that I used to know 
The fire is quenched with the drifted snow. 

"What bird is it, colleen, that cries so shrill?" 
Tis I; and I cry for a kind voice still — 
For a kind hand slipped from my clinging hold, 
For my place in a heart that to-night is cold. 

"What of the night, colleen, what of the night?" 
Oh, never a star dares show its light, 
But wildfire signals to ships at sea — 
And Miscann Many's the fire for me. 

One may sit by the wild-fire, and half forget 
The hands that parted, the lips that met: 
One may warm one's grief there; for deathly cold 
Is the heart that has never a pain to hold. 

"What pain is it, colleen, you'd win again 
By the fire that's quenched not of wind or rain? 
Why sit you silent the while you spin, 
As if your sorrow were half a sin?" 

What use of wailing? more use to spin, 
And dearest is sorrow that's half a sin — 
And the ghostly feet that I hear on the stair, 
Oh, they must walk soft though my heart go bare. 

Oh, mother, mother, one thing alone 
Keeps shut my lips that would fain make moan, 
It is that alone in the night I go 
And dree my weird betwixt snow and snow. 

Oh, sea-blue eyes of you, yellow head, 
You passed ere the flowers on the thorn were dead: 
And I give God thanks, though the ways be white, 
That His snows fall only on me to-night. 

Down in the depth of mine iniquity,
That ugly center of infernal spirits,
Where each sin feels her own deformity
In these peculiar torments she inherits—
Deprived of human graces and divine,
Even there appears this saving God of mine.

And in this fatal mirror of transgression,
Shows man as fruit of his degeneration,
The error's ugly infinite impression,
Which bears the faithless down to desperation.
Deprived of human graces and divine,
Even there appears this saving God of mine.

In power and truth, almighty and eternal,
Which on the sin reflects strange desolation,
With glory scourging all the spirits infernal,
And uncreated hell with unprivation—
Deprived of human graces, not divine,
Even there appears this saving God of mine.

For on this spiritual cross condemnëd lying
To pains infernal by eternal doom,
I see my Saviour for the same sins dying,
And from that hell I feared, to free me, come.
Deprived of human graces, not divine,
Thus hath his death raised up this soul of mine.