midnight
`` But how many recollections throng upon me , as I turn over these leaves ! This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road , on a starlight October evening ; in the pure and bracing air , I became all soul , and felt as if I could climb the sky , and run a race along the Milky Way . Here is another tale , in which I wrapt myself during a dark and dreary night-ride in the month of March , till the rattling of the wheels and the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of a dream , and my visions a bright reality . That scribbled page describes shadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight : they would not depart when I bade them ; the gray dawn came , and found me wide awake and feverish , the victim of my own enchantments ! '' `` There must have been a sort of happiness in all this , '' said I , smitten with a strange longing to make proof of it . `` There may be happiness in a fever fit , '' replied the author . `` And then the various moods in which I wrote !