In the mid silence of the voiceless night. [Midnight.] This beautiful lyric is known in the following forms:—
1. In Fosbery's Hymns and Poems for the Sick and Suffering , 1844, it begins:—
"In the mid silence of the voiceless night, When chased by airy dreams the slumbers flee."
This in Thring's Collection, 1882, No. 19, for Private Use.
2. This second form is No. 1278 in H. W. Beecher's Plymouth Collection, 1855, in 6 stanzas of 4 lines, beginning:—
"In silence of the voiceless night, When chased by dreams, the slumbers flee."
3. The third form is in the American Unitarian Hymns of the Spirit, 1864, No. 186, in 4 stanzas of 4 lines, as:—
"In the still silence of the voiceless night, When from my wakeful eyes the slumbers flee."
4. The fourth form is in Martineau's Hymns, &c, 1873, No. 596:—
"In the dead silence of the voiceless night." It is composed of the Hymns of the Spirit text, and stanzas iii. of No. 1 as above as stanzas iii.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)
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In the mid silence of the voiceless night, p. 1573, ii. 1. In T. V. Fosbery's Hymns & Poems, &c, 1844, p. 333, this hymn is marked as first published there from a manuscript found in a chest in a poor woman's cottage.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
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