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I. In the Night

Let us go in: the air is dank and chill
With dewy midnight, and the moon rides high
O'er ghostly fields, pale stream, and spectral hill.

This hour the dawn seems farthest from the sky
So weary long the space that lies between
That sacred joy and this dark mystery

Of earth and heaven: no glimmering is seen,
In the star-sprinkled east, of coming day,
Nor, westward, of the splendor that hath been.

Strange fears beset us, nameless terrors sway
The brooding soul, that hungers for her rest,
Out worn with changing moods, vain hopes' delay,

With conscious thought o'erburdened and oppressed.
The mystery and the shadow wax too deep;
She longs to merge both sense and thought in sleep.

-Emma Lazarus

II. The Birds’ Lullaby

Sing to us, cedars; the twilight is creeping
    With shadowy garments, the wilderness   through;
All day we have carolled, and now would be sleeping,
    So echo the anthems we warbled to you;
              While we swing, swing,
              And your branches sing,
        And we drowse to your dreamy whispering.                                  

Sing to us, cedars; the night-wind is sighing,
    Is wooing, is pleading, to hear you reply;
And here in your arms we are restfully lying,
    And longing to dream to your soft lullaby;
              While we swing, swing,
              And your branches sing.
        And we drowse to your dreamy whispering.                    

Sing to us, cedars; your voice is so lowly,
    Your breathing so fragrant, your branches so strong;
Our little nest-cradles are swaying so slowly,
    While zephyrs are breathing their slumberous song.
              And we swing, swing,
              While your branches sing,
        And we drowse to your dreamy whispering.

-Emily Pauline Johnson

III. At Dawn

Turn to thy window in the silver hour
That day comes stepping down the hills of night,
Infolded as the leaves infold a flower
By all her rose-leaf robes of misty light.

Then, like a joy born out of blackest sorrow,
The miracle of morning seems to say,
"There is no night without its dear to-morrow,
No lonely dark that does not find the day."

-Virna Sheard

IV. i thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e.e. cummings