Sonnet LII
Long has the pall of Midnight quench’d the scene,
And wrapt the hush’d horizon.—All around,
In scatter’d huts, Labor, in sleep profound,
Lies stretch’d, and rosy Innocence serene
Slumbers;—but creeps, with pale and starting mien,
Benighted Superstition.—Fancy-found,
The late self-slaughter’d Man, in earth yet green
And festering, burst from his incumbent mound,
Roams!—and the Slave of Terror thinks he hears
A mutter’d groan!—sees the sunk eye, that glares
As shoots the Meteor.—But no more forlorn
He strays;—the Spectre sinks into his tomb!
For now the jocund Herald of the Morn
Claps his bold wings, and sounds along the gloom1.
Notes
1: “It faded at the crowing of the cock.” Hamlet.