Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam
William Habington (1605 – 1654 )
WHEN I survey the bright
Celestial sphere;
So rich with jewels hung, that Night
Doth like an Ethiop bride appear:
My soul her wings doth spread
And heavenward flies,
Th’ Almighty’s mysteries to read
In the large volumes of the skies.
For the bright firmament
Shoots forth no flame
So silent, but is eloquent
In speaking the Creator’s name.
No unregarded star
Contracts its light
Into so small a character,
Removed far from our human sight,
But if we steadfast look
We shall discern
In it, as in some holy book,
How man may heavenly knowledge learn.
It tells the conqueror
That far-stretch’d power,
Which his proud dangers traffic for,
Is but the triumph of an hour:
That from the farthest North,
Some nation may,
Yet undiscover’d, issue forth,
And o’er his new-got conquest sway:
Some nation yet shut in
With hills of ice
May be let out to scourge his sin,
Till they shall equal him in vice.
And then they likewise shall
Their ruin have;
For as yourselves your empires fall,
And every kingdom hath a grave.
Thus those celestial fires,
Though seeming mute,
The fallacy of our desires
And all the pride of life confute:–
For they have watch’d since first
The World had birth:
And found sin in itself accurst,
And nothing permanent on Earth.
The Night
Henry Vaughn (1621-1695)
Through that pure Virgin-shrine,
That sacred veil drawn o’er thy glorious noon
That men might look and live as glow-worms shine,
And face the moon:
Wise Nicodemus saw such light
As made him know his God by night.
Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes
Thy long expected healing wings could see,
When thou didst rise,
And what can never more be done,
Did at mid-night speak with the Sun!
O who will tell me, where
He found thee at that dead and silent hour!
What hallowed solitary ground did bear
So rare a flower,
Within whose sacred leaves did lie
The fullness of the Deity.
No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone,
But his own living works did my Lord hold
And lodge alone;
Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.
Dear night! this world’s defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care’s check and curb;
The day of Spirits; my soul’s calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ’s progress, and his prayer time;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.
God’s silent, searching flight:
When my Lord’s head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
His still, soft call;
His knocking time; the soul’s dumb watch,
When Spirits their fair kindred catch.
Were all my loud, evil days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark Tent,
Whose peace but by some Angel’s wing or voice
Is seldom rent;
Then I in Heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here.
But living where the sun
Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
Themselves and others, I consent and run
To every mire,
And by this world’s ill-guiding light,
Err more than I can do by night.
There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear;
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.
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