midnights
Again I shudder as I note its desolation and its awful silence . Where was it ? To what monstrous inharmony of death was it the visible prelude ? O days when all the world was beautiful and strange ; when unfamiliar constellations burned in the Southern midnights , and the mocking-bird poured out his heart in the moon-gilded magnolia ; when there was something new under a new sun ; will your fine , far memories ever cease to lay contrasting pictures athwart the harsher features of this later world , accentuating the ugliness of the longer and tamer life ? Is it not strange that the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and look with so tender eyes ? -- that I recall with difficulty the danger and death and horrors of the time , and without effort all that was gracious and picturesque ? Ah , Youth , there is no such wizard as thou !