1. Dawn radiant and fair, your brow alight,
Spread your light to guide all in night.

2. A star in my sorrowful night arise,
Save me from the madness love implies.

3. A flower in my barren life now cast,
That it may grow and bloom in time past.

4. Grace us your smile of bliss sincere,
Laugh for us the laugh of carefree years.

5. Night falls again as ever it began,
Bringing grief and yearning to my heart.

6. In its temple sadness offers up
The gazes of lovers in worship.

7. The deacon chants a hymn in its name,
His chant echoed in laments the same.

8. Its scent the sorrows of flowers in bloom,
Its call the sobs of the grieving doomed.

9. Its breath stirs passions now turned to dust,
Souls faded, broken, perished to rust.

10. All is vain in love’s dominion wide,
My angel, and love will not be denied.

11. Night saw only a daughter of desire
Read in her brow what she was to acquire.

12. She wore at first love’s raiment anew,
But ended clad in garb of one who rues.

13. A leader tossed, groaned in the still of night,
Like a specter, and night a shrine of old.

14. A bard, overwhelmed with sadness he clutched,
Played tunes of revelry now far out of touch.

15. Lost in thought, the melody he knows not,
As the night fades to a forgotten lot.

16. A friend kept night’s company with tales
Of days and people nowunseen, impaled

17. On memories trembling on eyelids shut.
O night, we came to you, our plight to put.

18. Grief has oppressed us, sorrow brought us low,
Passion ravaged us in this vale of woe.

19. We cried out to you, came to you in kind
To speak, if only to the heedless blind.

20. O night, of a song I’ll sing the vestige
That in you through the years has evanesced.

21. In ruin it lingers, a grave that croons
In the gloom of death’s dominion marooned.

22. O night, a beam of light I’ll recall
In dreamers' skies, ablaze over all.

23. A formidable thought has pulled it near
To rouse rebellion, tumultuous and severe.

24. In wrath it turned into a bloom so vile
In a world ambiguous, opacity its style.

25. It breathes out death, lowers its bough
Toward the ghosts of those dying now.

26. I am a feeling led far astray
By a thought that in you death has lain.

27. It tried to grasp your mysteries, to glean
Secrets of grief from you, O night serene.

28. Into a stream it flowed, crossed by the throes
Of death in the dark, in boats that morbidly row.

29. This is my song, to you recited
My refuge of stillness, how you blighted!

30. You composed, and grief revealed its meter
While death knelled its warning to those who would hear.

31. Do not blame it for the sadness it bore,
For grief is the music of those forlorn.

32. Sweetest tunes are of sorrows wrought,
Molded by yearning, anguish fraught.

33. Embrace me in the dark, draw near,
I shudder at what brings you to fear.

34. Press your cheek to me, take me in
To your nurturing breast, let our lips begin

35. To meet. Let me in you dissolve to naught,
As in God many a pious soul has been caught.

36. We are but ships that strayed from their line
Among aimless people, scattered, incline

37. To forget all that was ours, and neglect
What the morrow may hold or reflect.