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

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day!

Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe That all was lost.

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

What hath night to do with sleep?

And that must end us, that must be our cure: To be no more. Sad cure! For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish, rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night Devoid of sense and motion?