Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

I sadden when amid the stars I look—
And think the earth is only one of them.
Imagination soars beyond all ken,
Yet is no nearer to an end of stars.
Away into the painful deeps of space
Oppressèd thought speeds on its endless way,
But still unnumber'd worlds lie all around,
And this globed earth becomes a winking point,
Unmark'd, unknown from millions of the same.

And so I cannot look amid the stars,
And link the earth as one upon my vision,
But straight a blighting sadness on me falls:
I lose all faith in man's high destiny,
More than may well belong to a race of ants;
And nothing can I see for him in time,
But eat and sleep that he may live and work,

Then die that he may make room for another.
O, there is nothing else! What could there be
For him who is but an atom of a whole—
A grain work'd in amongst the myriads
That make the solid rock?

But whilst I heave
My sadness on the night, the stars, like eyes—
Most earnest, pitying eyes—beweep the lie
That festers in my brain. Ye pulsing stars!
We revel nightly in your nectar'd light
Until we reel in joy like drunken gods:
Ye flood us into trances with your beauty;
But are ye conscious of the power ye own?
Constant and true ye are; but do ye crave
For ever, as do we, more of God's truth?
Have ye a sense of duty? Know ye aught
Of right and wrong? Dream ye of buried time,
Or brood ye, prophet-like, on years unborn?
Ah, no! Ye roll out innocent as tears
Upon the cheek of Night, and have no sense
Of that emotion out of which ye came—
No feeling of the light that in you gleams.
Ye have no heart-eye, blear'd with the regret
Of wasted years, wild wandering in the Now,
Or radiant with the orient dawn of hope.
There is in you no show of comprehension:
Brighter than eyes ye are, yet want perception.

Then why should we who have all these be sad,

And feel ourselves eclipsèd by the stars?
Earth, thou'rt a star, yet art beneath our feet:
Man is thy lord, and thou his vassal nurse:
And all the proud orbs of the arching sky
Bow down to his high thought.—I am not sad,
Nor feel I now the glory of the stars
Oppress and dwarf me into littleness:
Believing, this that sees and comprehends
Is greater than that seen and comprehended.

Believing? Thou must know and feel that truth:
Believing only, and repeating thus
The thoughts that are as old as poet's song,
Will never make thee greater than the stars;
And thou art dead as they, unless that truth
Be in thy soul as blood is in thy frame.