midnight
`` Ah ! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven ? -- that dark red smoke Blotting the silver moon ? ... Hark to that roar whose swift and deafening peals , In countless echoes , through the mountains ring , Startling pale midnight on her starry throne ! * * * * * Loud and more loud , the discord grows , Till pale Death shuts the scene , And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws His cold and bloody shroud . '' SHELLEY . The 6th of March rose dark and lowering , and all nature wore an aspect meet for the horrors which that day chronicled in the page of history .