Earth of departed sunset, the eager light dispell’d,
(I too will soon be gone, dispell’d,)
The coming eve delicious in falling twilight, sparkles of day and dusk,
The airy, different, changing hues of all,
A sky of limpid pearl over all, limitless out of the dusk—
And so evening.

Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask, lie over,
You light surfaces only, I force the surfaces and the depths also,
The deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many fold,
However lush and pompous the day may be, there is something left in the not-day that can outvie it. 

Who has done his day’s work and will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

The party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs,
Through the long-lingering half-light of the most superb of evenings,
Through the soft evening air enwinding all—
The night pervades them and infolds them.
(I have often thought if there was not a night side of human character too, of personality,
A sort of phantasmagoric delirium tremens.)

Perfect or nearly perfect days, I notice, are not so very uncommon. But the combinations that make perfect nights are few, even in a lifetime—miracles of clearness and purity. We have one of those perfections tonight, a wonderful conjunction of all that goes to make those sometime miracle-hours after sunset—so near and yet so far.

Night of south winds, how solemn!
Sweeping this dense black tide, the netherward black of the night,
The atmosphere that rare vitreous blue-black,
Shades of night blue-black, transparent, full-starr’d, shadowy.

There are hours of nature, especially of the atmosphere, mornings and evenings, address’d to the soul, those hours that give hints to the soul, impossible to put in a statement. The night transcends, for that purpose, what the proudest day can do. The soul retires in the cool communion of the welcome night and the stars, and surveys its experience.

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
The teeming spiritual darkness, the night that talks not,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing,
Pondering the themes thou lovest best—night, sleep, death, and the stars.
It is the spirit’s hour, so fascinating, dreamy—almost conscious of a definite presence,
The visible suggestion of God in space and time, now once definitely indicated, if never again—
Ah, where would be any food for spirituality without night and the stars?

Oh! the long, long walks, way into the nights!
Sometimes lasting until two or three in the morning,
As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done.

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of paradise,
I breathe the fragrance myself —the natural perfume belonging to the night alone—and know it and like it.

Elements merge in the splendor of the night that envelops me—
The cool night air, the silence, the earth and sea half-held by the night—
All the influences do me good.
With the sentiment of the stars and moon such nights, I get all the free margins and indefiniteness of music or poetry, fused in geometry’s utmost exactness,
Alertness and peace calmly couching together through the fluid universal shadows,
Now I absorb immortality and peace,
The myth of heaven indicates peace and night.

Press close, magnetic, nourishing night,
Huge and thoughtful night, inexpressibly pensive,
Moody, tearful night, inexpressibly rich, suggestive,
Still, nodding, slumberous night,
Indolent and spiritual, solitary, indescribable,
With its own tender and temper’d splendor.

Press close, bare-bosomed night,
Amorous night, with mystic beauty,
Full of love also, and full of greater life. 

I fled forth to the hiding receiving night— 
O night! do I not see my love?
My truant lover has come, and it is dark,
Double yourself and receive me darkness,
Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go without him. 

He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,
He rises with me silently from the bed.
Be careful darkness! already what was it touch’d me?
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are one.

Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was sweaty and panting,
I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself to the dusk,
I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I sleep long, I fade away,
A haze—nirvana—rest and night—on to oblivion—
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night.

 NEXT: MIDNIGHT TO MORNING TWILIGHT

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).