Midnight

Midnight recurs as more than a point on the clock: it gathers danger and grief into a single threshold, first through a catalogue of nocturnal figures and, at the poem’s close, through a song heard as the golden apple falls.

The Hour of Nocturnal Threat

As a beautiful, shadowy night approaches, midnight is named the appointed hour of murderers, bats, thieves, and wandering spirits. The list makes the hour feel inhabited by forces that evade ordinary daylight and order. Its images range from human violence to animal life and the supernatural, giving midnight a deliberately unstable character: it belongs both to the night’s natural creatures and to its dangers.

The Closing Midnight

Near the poem’s end, the attendants gradually withdraw until they can no longer be seen. The golden apple then falls, and a song is heard from afar. Its opening identifies midnight as cold and sorrowful, while the sky’s gloom sinks toward mourning; the singer then invites a beloved to rejoice in the night. The sequence makes the hour at once bleak and intimate: an image of loss frames an invitation to shared delight.

Recurrence and Significance

The two appearances place midnight at different points in the work, but both associate it with a world set apart from ordinary time. Earlier, it is the uncanny high point of night, when violence and spirits are at home; at the close, it becomes the setting for a distant song after the golden apple’s fall. The contrast between menace and invitation gives the recurring hour a double charge, while its final conjunction with disappearance, falling fruit, and mournful music leaves the ending suspended between sorrow and anticipated joy.