A deep but dazzling darkness

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.

— Henry Vaughan (1621-1695), The Night