"What Dost Thou See, O Night?"

What Dost Thou See, O Night?

What dost thou see with thy clear eyes, O Night?

        How many sinful ones upon this earth

        Who curse the very hour that gave them birth;

How many who, with passionate lips and white,

Kneel, praying for the old dear, lost delight;

        How many lonely breasts sob low and deep;

        How many sleeping, dream, and dreaming, weep—

How many, sleepless, count the slow hours’ flight,

And long for the first yellow flush of dawn?

        How many look through cruel prison bars

        At the wide purple air and silver stars?

How many souls, since thou last watched, have gone

        Into some other where—all rest and light?. . .

        What does thou see with thy clear eyes, O Night?

"What Dost Thou See, O Night?" as it appears in Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).

A draft of "What Dost Thou See, O Night?" on onionskin paper, courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.

This poem also appears in a 1994 edition of Fantasy Macabre, a gothic literary magazine that was based in Seattle.

"What Dost Thou See, O Night?" as it appears in Fantasy Macabre #16 (1994).