With ice-cold hands and pitiless eyes,
As stars grow out of the summer skies,
Tangible things to mortal sight,
Under the hands of the wizard Night!

Night! the mystical prophet, Night!
The haunted and awful Night!
With the trail of his garment's shadowy fall,
Soundless and black as a funeral pall,
Now enters his dread laboratory.
A wan, and faint, and wavering glory
Shines from a veiled lamp somewhere hidden.
Like a lily in a grave:
And things unholy, and things forbidden,--
Hands that have long been the earth-worm's prey,
And shrouded faces out of the clay.
Rise and fill the enchanted cave
With a pale and deathly light,--
The haunted and awful Night!

Night! the abhorred magician Night!
The black astrologer Night!
Night is the world!--I shiver with fright:--
The air is full of evil things,
The coil and glitter of snaky rings,
And, the tremor of vast invisible wings,
That are not heard but felt:
They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek,
They mope and mouth, but they never speak
To utter their awful history.