Foresight: Dazzling Darkness

'Night on the Southern Shore', Nikolay Nikanorovich Dubovskoy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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'The Night' by Henry Vaughan

John III. 2

          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 midnight speak with the Sun!

          Oh, 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 cheek 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.

          Where 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.
     Oh, for that Night! where I in Him
     Might live invisible and dim.

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Nikolay Dubovskoy (1859–1918) was a Russian landscape painter.

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) was a Welsh writer and a medical physician.