summer midnight
He could scarcely expect them for an hour , but he walked restlessly about the enclosure of the parapet , breathing gratefully the cool night air . The lamp within his cabin shone dimly through the small windows upon his promenade . Beyond the battlements to the east , the evening star , which the Roman poet called Noctifer , began to bicker and brighten in the serene sky , and the last vestige of the sun 's afterglow had now faded from the west . It was already as dark as a summer midnight . Small and continuous sounds came floating up from the city beyond . Immediately below he heard the occasional voices of students passing on the stone walk , and from the meadows on the west came the melancholy hoot of an owl . Accustomed though he had been to lonely vigils , he was impressed by the juxtaposition of the minute and the infinitely vast , of the transient and the eternal .