Night of Love

By Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872–1906 Paul Laurence Dunbar

The moon has left the sky, love,

The stars are hiding now,

And frowning on the world, love,

Night bares her sable brow.

The snow is on the ground, love,

And cold and keen the air is.

I’m singing here to you, love;

You’re dreaming there in Paris.

But this is Nature’s law, love,

Though just it may not seem,

That men should wake to sing, love;

While maidens sleep and dream.

Them care may not molest, love,

Nor stir them from their slumbers,

Though midnight find the swain, love.

Still halting o’er his numbers.

I watch the rosy dawn, love,

Come stealing up the east,

While all things round rejoice, love,

That Night her reign has ceased.

The lark will soon be heard, love,

And on his way be winging;

When Nature’s poets, wake, love,

Why should a man be singing?

Biography

Paul Laurence Dunbar is widely acknowledged as the first important black poet in American literature. He enjoyed his greatest popularity in the early twentieth century following the publication of dialectic verse in collections such as Majors and Minors and Lyrics of Lowly Life. But the dialectic poems constitute only a small portion of Dunbar's canon, which is replete with novels, short stories, essays, and many poems in . . .

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