Night is the true democracy. When day
— Like some great monarch with his train has passed
— In regal pomp and splendor to the last,
The stars troop forth along the Milky Way,
A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray,
— On heaven's broad boulevard in pageants vast.
— And things of earth, the hunted and outcast,
Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea,
Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind
— Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start,
— — And specters of dead joy, that shun the light,
And impotent regrets and terrors blind,
— Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part
— — In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night.