Fly not yet; 't is just the hour When pleasure, like the midnight flower That scorns the eye of vulgar light, Begins to bloom for sons of night And maids who love the moon.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that true beauty and pleasure often reveal themselves in the darkness and mystery of night, away from the harshness of day.
In this quote, Charles Lamb uses the imagery of a midnight flower to convey that there are moments and experiences that flourish in the cover of night, away from the mundane and ordinary. He highlights that there is a unique beauty in things that are often overlooked by the masses, and that those who appreciate the night and its offerings are rewarded with a deeper understanding of pleasure and beauty.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a poetry reading to emphasize the beauty found in nocturnal experiences.
Thus, when the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out, He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt. But soon, the prospect clearing, By cloudless starlight on he treads, And thinks no lamp so cheering As that light which Heaven sheds.
As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see, So deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion, Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee. As still to the star of its worship, though clouded, The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea, So dark when I roam in this wintry world shrouded, The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee.
The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is perhaps cowardice.
Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I 've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 't was the first to fade away. I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well And love me, it was sure to die.
May my last breath be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled in a jest.
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.
Sitting over words _x000D_ Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing _x000D_ Not far _x000D_ Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark _x000D_ The echo of everything that has ever _x000D_ Been spoken _x000D_ Still spinning its one syllable _x000D_ Between the earth and silence.
I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain A use measured language lie's The sad mechanic exercise Like dull narcotic's, numbing pain In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er Like coarsest clothes against the cold But large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.
When I breathe,_x000D_ This sound in my chest_x000D_ Lonelier than the winter wind
The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.
Tonight I feel the stars are out_x000D_ to use me for target practice.
Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
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