's Apprenticeship'

Sing me not with such emotion
How the night so lonesome is;
Pretty maids, I've got a notion
It is the reverse of this.

For as wife and man are plighted,
And the better half the wife,
So is night to day united,--
Night's the better half of life.

Can you joy in bustling daytime,--
Day, when none can get his will?
It is good for work, for haytime;
For much other it is ill.

But when in the nightly glooming,
Social lamp on table glows,
Face for faces dear illuming,
And such jest and joyance goes;

When the fiery pert young fellow,
Wont by day to run or ride,
Whispering now some tale would tell O,--
All so gentle by your side;

When the nightingale to lovers
Lovingly her songlet sings,
Which for exiles and sad rovers
Like mere woe and wailing rings;

With a heart how lightsome-feeling
Do ye count the kindly clock,
Which, twelve times deliberate pealing,
Tells you none to-night shall knock!

Therefore, on all fit occasions,
Mark it, maidens, what I sing:
Every day its own vexations,
And the night its joys will bring.

PROMETHEUS

Blacken thy heavens, Jove,
With thunder-clouds,
And exercise thee, like a boy
Who thistles crops,
With smiting oaks and mountain-tops:
Yet must leave me standing
My own firm earth;
Must leave my cottage, which thou didst not build,
And my warm hearth,
Whose cheerful glow
Thou enviest me.

I know naught more pitiful
Under the sun, than you, gods!
Ye nourish scantily
With altar taxes
And with cold lip-service,
This your majesty;--
Would perish, were not
Children and beggars
Credulous fools.

When I was a child,
And knew not whence or whither,
I would turn my 'wildered eye
To the sun, as if up yonder were
An ear to hear to my complaining--A
heart, like mine,
On the oppressed to feel compassion.

Who helped me
When I braved the Titans' insolence?
Who rescued me from death,
From slavery?
Hast thou not all thyself accomplished,
Holy-glowing heart?
And, glowing, young, and good,
Most ignorantly