Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — Night

Into the darkness and the hush of night        &nbsp Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away,        &nbsp And with it fade the phantoms of the day,        &nbsp The ghosts of men and things, that haunt the light, The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the flight,        &nbsp The unprofitable splendor and display,        &nbsp The agitations, and the cares that prey        &nbsp Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight. The better life begins; the world no more        &nbsp Molests us; all its records we erase        &nbsp From the dull common-place book of our lives, That like a palimpsest is written o'er        &nbsp With trivial incidents of time and place,        &nbsp And lo! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives.