Summer Evening’s Meditation

One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine.

Young.

’Tis past! The sultry tyrant of the south

Has spent his short-liv’d rage; more gratefulhours

Move silent on; the skies no more repel

The dazzled sight, but with mild maiden beams

Of tempered lustre, court the cherished eye

To wander o’er their sphere; where hung aloft

Dian’s bright crescent, like a silver bow

New strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns

Impatient for the night, and seems to push

Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines

Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam

Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood

Of softened radiance from her dewy locks.

The shadows spread apace; while meekened Eve,

Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires

Thro’ the Hesperian gardens of the west,

And shuts the gates of day. ‘’Tis now the hour

When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts,

The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth

Of unpierc’d woods, where wrapt in solid shade

She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,

And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun,

Moves forward; and with radiant finger points

To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine,

Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven

Awake, quick kindling o’er the face of ether

One boundless blaze; then thousand trembling fires,

And dancing lustres, where the unsteady eye,

Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfin’d

O’er all this field of glories; spacious field,

And worthy of the Master: he, whose hand

With hieroglyphics elder than the Nile

Inscribed the mystic tablet: hung on high

To public gaze, and said, Adore, O man!

The finger of thy God. From what pure wells

Of milky light, what soft o’erflowing urn,

Are all these lamps so fill’d? these friendly lamps,

For ever streaming o’er the assure deep

To point our path, and light us to our home.

How soft they slide along with their lucid spheres!

And silent as the foot of time, fulfil

Their destined courses. Nature’s self is hushed,

And, but a scattered leaf, which rustles thro’

The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard

To break the midnight air; tho’ the raised earm

Intensely listening, drinks in every breath.

How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise!

But are they silent all? or is there not

A tongue in every star that talks with man

And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain:

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,

And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

At this still hour the self-collected soul

Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there

Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;

An embryo God; a spark of fire divine,

Which must burn on for ages, when the sun

(Fair transitory creature of a day!)

Has closed his golden eye, and wrapt in shades

Forgets his wonted journey thro’ the east.

Ye citadels of light, and seats of Gods!

Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul

Revolving periods past, may oft look back,

With recollected tenderness, on all

The various busy scenes she left below,

Its deep laid projects and its strange events,

As on some fond and doting tale that sooth’d

Her infant hours – O be it lawful now

To tread the hallow’d circle of your courts,

And with jute wonder and delighted awe

Approach your burning confines. Seiz’d in thought,

On fancy’s wild and roving wing I sail,

From the green borders of the peopled earth,

And the pale moon, her duteous fair attendant;

From solitary Mars; from the vast orb

Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk

Dances in ether like the lightest leaf;

To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system,

Where cheerless Saturn ’midst his wat’ry moons

Girt with a lucid zone, in gloomy pomp,

Sits like an exiled monarch: fearless thence

I launch into the trackless deeps of space,

Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear,

Of elder beam, which ask no kleave to shine

Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light

From the proud regent of our scanty day;

Sons of the morning, first-born of creation,

And only less than Him who marks their track,

And guides their fiery wheels. Here must I stop,

Or is their aught beyond? What hand unseen

Impels me onward thro’ the glowing orbs

Of habitable nature, far remote

To the dread confines of eternal night,

To solitudes of vast unpeopled space,

The desarts of creation, wide and wild;

Where embryo systems and unkindled suns

Sleep in the womb of chaos? Fancy droops,

And thought astonish’d stops her bold career.

But oh thou mighty mind! whose powerful word

Said, Thus let all things be, and thus they were,

Where shall I seek thy presence? how unblamed

Invoke thy dread perfection?

Have the broad eye-lids of the morn beheld thee?

Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion

Support thy throne? O look with pity down

On erring, guilty man; not in thy names

Of terror clad; not with those thunders armed

That conscious Sinai felt, when fear appalled

The scatt’d tribes; thou hast a gentler voice,

That whispers comfort to the swelling heart,

Abash’d, yet longing to behold her Maker.

But now my soul, unused to stretch her powers

In flight so daring, drops her weary wing,

And seeks again the known accustomed spot,

Drest up with sun, and shade, and lawns, and streams,

A mansion fair and spacious for its guest,

And full replete with wonders. Let me here,

Content and grateful wait the appointed time,

And ripen for the skies: the hour will come

When all these splendors bursting on my sight

Shall stand unveiled, and to my ravish’d sense

Unlock the glories of the world unknown.

Text: Poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld. New Ed. (London: Printed for Joseph Johnson, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1792), pp. 137-44.