midnight

   Hence loathe'  d Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings.

—Milton,John

   Their smiles, Wan as primroses gathered at midnight By chilly fingered spring.

—Keats,John

Holding hands at midnight 'Neath a starry sky, Nice work if you can get it, And you can get it if you try.

—Gershwin, Ira originally Israel Gershowitz

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking inthestreet, Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

—Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do). See Bible121:16.

—Parker, Dorothy ne¤  e Rothschild

It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old courthouse pacing up and down.

—Lindsay, (Nicholas) Vachel

At midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free.

—Browning, Robert

   Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair nature's eye, rise, rise, again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but Ayear, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi: The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Oh, I'll leap up to my God!öWho pulls me down?ö See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah, my Christ.

—Marlowe, Christopher

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muse'  d rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!

—Keats,John

It was manifest to me that there was something in the Roman Catholic religion which made the priests very dear to the people; for I doubt whether in any village in England, had such an accident happened to the rector, all the people would have roused themselves at midnight to wreak their vengeance on the assailant.

—Trollope, Anthony

The seal is set.öNow welcome, thou dread power! Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here Walk'st in the shadow of the midnight hour With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear; Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear That we become a part of what has been, And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen.

—Rochdale

The stroke of midnight ceases, And I lie down alone.

—Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)

'Tis midnight, falls the lamp-light dull and sickly On a pale and anxious crowd, Through the court, and round the judges thronging thickly, With prayers they dare not speak aloudö Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the barö You can see them through the gloomö In the pride of life and manhood's beauty, there they are Awaiting their death-doom.

—Wilde,Jane Francesca ne¤  e Elgee

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)