THE FRONT PORCH COLLECTION ~ 5

Night Thoughts, compiled

by Simon Winder

It’s quite a while since I plucked a volume from the window-sill of my front porch and shared it with you. The books are not so sun-kissed of late but are bathed in a showery winter light and seem to be bearing up well ! This book has the slightly chilling title of ‘Night Thoughts’, a collection of prose and poems about the world of darkness celebrating the great tradition of ‘night-writing’.The book is the perfect companion for these long winter evenings when “Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, / While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”(Macbeth ) ~ GOSh. ~

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MY MIDNIGHT MEDITATION

Ill busi'd man! why should'st thou take such care
To lengthen out thy life's short calendar?
When ev'ry spectacle thou lookst upon
Presents and acts thy execution.
Each drooping season and each flower doth cry,
"Fool! as I fade and wither, thou must die.

"The beating of thy pulse (when thou art well)
Is just the tolling of thy Passing Bell:
Night is thy Hearse, whose sable Canopy
Covers alike deceased day and thee.
And all those weeping dews which nightly fall,
Are but the tears shed for thy funeral."

Henry King