“Night of all nights”

by Jesse Stuart

Night of all nights, rich with the wind’s wild laughter!     

Your thick blue skies, fleecelin’d with floating white;     

Night of all nights, your sparkling moonlit water     

Calls me to run and run into the night!     

Music is in the wind that bends the sedge     

Brown on the waste lands where the rabbits play;     

Music is in the wind that cools the ledge     

Where sheep lie down to wait for morning’s dew.     

Over the wastelands to my neck in briers,     

Over the hollows and their swollen creeks,     

And through white streaks of light from stars’ white fires,     

I run on iron legs with wind that speaks!     

Night of all nights, that puts my blood astir     

Like wild blood in the body of the fox,     

I run these hills and ridges anywhere     

Until the sun shines on the pasture rocks!