{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/a-summer-night",
 "title": "A Summer Night",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "empedocles-on-etna",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 12,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1852,
  "venue": "Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems (1852)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/empedoclesonetna00arno"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/matthew-arnold_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
   "https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamawrea00marsgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 92,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 54,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "In the deserted moon-blanch’d street",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "How lonely rings the echo of my feet!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent and white, unopening down,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Repellent as the world:⁠—but see!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A break between the housetops shows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The moon, and, lost behind her, fading dim",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the dewy dark obscurity",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Down at the far horizon’s rim,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And to my mind the thought",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Is on a sudden brought",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a past night, and a far different scene.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As clearly as at noon;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The spring-tide’s brimming flow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Heav’d dazzlingly between;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Houses with long white sweep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Girdled the glistening bay:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Behind, through the soft air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That night was far more fair;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But the same restless pacings to and fro,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the same bright calm moon.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And the calm moonlight seems to say⁠—",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That neither deadens into rest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor ever feels the fiery glow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That whirls the spirit from itself away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But fluctuates to and fro",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never by passion quite possess’d",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And never quite benumb’d by the world’s sway?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I, I know not if to pray",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still to be what I am, or yield, and be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like all the other men I see.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For most men in a brazen prison live,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Where in the sun’s hot eye,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With heads bent o’er their toil, they languidly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And as, year after year,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fresh products of their barren labour fall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From their tired hands, and rest",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Never yet comes more near,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And while they try to stem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Death in their prison reaches them,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And the rest, a few,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Escape their prison and depart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the wide Ocean of Life anew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Listeth, will sail;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor doth he know how there prevail,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Despotic on that sea,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Awhile he holds some false way, undebarr’d",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "By thwarting signs, and braves",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The freshening wind and blackening waves.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And then the tempest strikes him, and between",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The lightning bursts is seen",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Only a driving wreck,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the pale Master on his spar-strewn deck",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With anguish’d face and flying hair",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grasping the rudder hard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still bent to make some port he knows not where,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still standing for some false impossible shore.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sterner comes the roar",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he too disappears, and comes no more.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Is there no life, but these alone?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Madman or slave, must man be one?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Clearness divine!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ye Heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of languor, though so calm, and though so great,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are yet untroubled and unpassionate:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who though so noble share in the world’s toil,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, though so task’d keep free from dust and soil:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I will not say that your mild deeps retain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who have long’d deeply once, and long’d in vain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I will rather say that you remain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A world above man’s head, to let him see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How boundless might his soul’s horizons be,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How vast, yet of what clear transparency.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How it were good to abide there, and breathe free.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How fair a lot to fill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is left to each man still.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}