Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

James Chapman Woods

The World’s Death-Night

I THINK a stormless night-time shall ensue

Unto the world, yearning for hours of calm:

Not these the end,—nor sudden-closing palm

Of a God’s hand beneath the skies we knew,

Nor fall from a fierce heaven of fiery dew

In place of the sweet dewfall, the world’s balm,

Nor swell of elemental triumph-psalm

Round the long-buffeted bulk, rent through and through.

But in the even of its endless night,

With shoreless floods of moonlight on its breast,

And bath of healing mist about its scars,

An instant sums its circling years of flight,

And the tir’d earth hangs crystall’d into rest,

Girdled with gracious watchings of the stars.