In 1687, John Norris of Bemerton (1657–1711), a lesser “metaphysical” poet, Anglican clergyman, and Tory pamphleteer, published an extraordinary “Hymn to Darkness.” Written as England’s last Catholic monarch revived hopes and fears of Stuart absolutism, Norris’s poem stands out from other English “poetry of night” through its praise of darkness as an awe-inspiring ruler:

1. Thy native lot thou didst to light resign,

2. But still half of the Globe is thine.

3. Here with a quiet but yet aweful hand

4. Like the best Emperours thou dost command.

Norris wrote within an established genre, the poetic nocturne, describing darkness, to whom “the Stars above their brightness owe,” as a “most sacred Venerable thing” complementary to and inseparable from light. But as a supporter of James II, Norris brought a new political message to the nocturne: he envisioned darkness as an essential aspect of divine and earthly majesty and authority:

1. Tho Light and Glory be th’Almighty’s Throne,

2. Darkness is his Pavilion.

3. From that his radiant Beauty, but from thee

4. He has his Terrour and his Majesty.