Wrapped in glory of noonday sun,
Wrapped in glory of noonday sun,
Floats a world of pleasure and mirth:
But few are the robes of sunlight spun
For wear when the beautiful day is done
And night creeps over the earth.

Under the blackness of midnight sky,
Hangs a world of grief and lament;
And Oh! for a garment of light! they cry,
We never dreamed that the day could die,
Till the sunshine all was spent.

The days will come and the days will go,
And the nights will ever steal on apace;
And the world will dance in the sun’s warm glow,
And weep when the evening shadows grow,
And gone is the sunlight’s grace.

Oh! haste ye, worldlings, haste to spin
Your garments of shining, immortal gold,
And the long, long night of grief shuts in,
Till the splendors of morn unfold.

Emma C. Dowd
Meriden, Connecticut, 1885