At the Mid Hour of Night

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air,
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remembered, even in the sky.

Then I sing the wild song ’twas once such pleasure to hear!
When our voices commingling breathed, like one, on the ear;
And, as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, oh my love! ’tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls,
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 9, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“At the Mid Hour of Night” by Thomas Moore was first published in 1813 in Irish Melodies (1807–34) and later anthologized in Poetry of Thomas Moore (Macmillan and Co., 1903), edited by C. Litton Falkiner. In his introduction, Falkiner wrote, “The generous modesty with which Moore is thus content to ascribe the fame of the Melodies to their music is unjust to their merit as poetry. It is true, indeed, that those who only know these songs in association with the airs to which they are set will sometimes find difficulty in appreciating their value considered simply as poems, so exquisitely intimate is their union of music and poetry. The music lingers in the memory, and dominates the impression which the words alone should produce. The very success with which the poet subordinates his songs to their setting militates against the appreciation of their poetical merit. Those, however, who read the Melodies simply as verse, will find in them both the impulse and the form of genuine poetry.”