ven to the rising of the morning star, which
burned red above the Sultan's turret. To bed, satisfied with this night."

Northern literature has never taken the roof seriously. There have been
many books written from the viewpoint of windows. The study window is
usual. Then there is the college window and the Thrums window. Also there
is a window viewpoint as yet scarcely expressed; that of the boy of
Stevenson's poems with his nose flattened against the glass--convalescence
looking for sailormen with one leg. What is "Un Philosophe sous les Toits"
but a garret and its prospect? But does Souvestre ever go up on the roof?
He contents himself with opening his casement and feeding crumbs to the
birds. Not once does he climb out and scramble around the mansard. On
wintry nights neither his legs nor thoughts join the windy devils that
play tempest overhead. Then again, from Westminster bridges, from country
lanes, from crowded streets, from ships at sea, and mountain tops have
sonnets been thrown to the moon; not once from the roof.

Is not this neglect of the roof the chief reason why we Northerners fear
the night? When darkness is concerned, the cowardice of our poetry is
notorious. It skulks, so to speak, when beyond the glare of the street
lights. I propound it as a question for scholars.

'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world.

Why is the night conceived as the time for the bogey to be abroad?--an

... evil thing that walks by night,
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Blue meager hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time.

Why does not this slender, cerulean dame keep normal hours and get sleepy
after dinner with the rest of us--and so to bed? Such a baneful thing is
night, "hideous," reeking with cold shivers and gloom, from which morning
alone gives relief.

Pack, clouds, away! and welcome, day!
With night we banish sorrow.

Day is jocund that stands on the misty mountain tops.

But we cannot expect the night to be friendly and wag its tail when we
slam against it our doors and, until lately, our windows. Naturally it
takes to ghoulishness. It was in the South where the roofs are flat and
men sleep as friends with the night that it was written, "The heavens
declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handiwork."

I get full of my subject as I write and a kind of r