On a Dark Night (Stanzas of the Soul)
About this edition
The poem “In an obscure night” (En una noche oscura) in David Lewis’s 1864 blank-verse translation, all eight stanzas: the song the Ascent of Mount Carmel and the Dark Night of the Soul set out to explain, here on its own. Lewis kept close to the Spanish rather than rhyming it.
The Obscure Night of the Soul
In an obscure night,
With anxious love inflamed,
O, happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and security,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
O, happy lot!
In darkness and concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning,
That light guided me
More surely than the noonday sun
To the place where He was waiting for me,
Whom I knew well,
And where none but He appeared.
O, guiding night;
O, night more lovely than the dawn;
O, night that hast united
The Lover with His beloved,
And changed her into her Love.
On my flowery bosom,
Kept whole for Him alone,
He reposed and slept;
I kept Him, and the waving
Of the cedars fanned Him.
Then His hair floated in the breeze
That blew from the turret;
He struck me on the neck
With His gentle hand,
And all sensation left me.
I continued in oblivion lost,
My head was resting on my Love;
I fainted away, abandoned,
And, amid the lilies forgotten,
Threw all my cares away.
About this text.
Public domain. David Lewis’s translation, The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, volume 2 (London: Longman, Green, 1864). Digitized from a scan and corrected; you may read, copy, and share it. Sourced from
Internet Archive (David Lewis, 1864, vol. 2);
typeset for reading by Exchanged.