’ Tis the middle watch of a summer’ s night,— The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Nought is seen in the vault on high But the moon and the stars and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,— A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Crow Nest, She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade By the walnut boughs and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the firefly’ s spark,— Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest rack.
The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnish’ d length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below.
The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket’ s chirp and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katy-did, And the plaints of the mourning whip-poor-will, Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and wo,
Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow. ’ Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell: The wood-tick has kept the minutes well;
He has counted them all with click and stroke Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak; And he has awakened the sentry-elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree,
To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry. They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullen’ s velvet screen;
Some on the backs of beetles fly From the silver tops of moon-touch’ d trees, Where they swing in their cob-web hammocks high, And rock’ d about in the evening breeze;
Some from the hum-bird’ s downy nest,— They had driven him out by elfin power, And pillow’ d on plumes of his rainbow breast Had slumber’ d there till the charmed hour;
Some had lain in a scarp of the rock, With glittering rising-stars inlaid, And some had open’ d the four-o’ clock, And stolen within its purple shade.
And now they throng the moonlight glade, Above — below — on every side, Their little minion forms arrayed In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride.
Cookies on Poetry Cove