Sweet the coming on / Of grateful evening mild; then silent night / With this her solemn bird and this fair moon, / And these the gems of heaven, her starry train.

The sun to me is dark / And silent as the moon, / When she deserts the night / Hid in her vacant, interlunar cave.

Just then return'd at shut of evening flowers.

Now came still evening on; and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad: Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to they grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.

To behold the wandering moon, / Riding near her highest noon, / Like one that had been led astray / Through the heav'n's wide pathless way; / And oft, as if her head she bowed, / Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would / By her own radiant light, though sun and moon / Were in the flat sea sunk.