University of Virginia Library

THE LOST PLEIAD.

Departed world! O, whither art thou fled?
—For thou may'st not be of the past!—the dead!
Forefend the thought, great Heaven! No!—not of those
Wert thou, whose marked and measured span must close;
But undestructible—beyond the storm!—
Decay might never reach thy radiant form!
Annihilation might not strike thy frame,
Nor quench the unextinguishable flame
That wrapt thee like a royal mantle round.
But thou'rt no more in thy proud orbit found—
Oh! whither hast thou fled? bright wanderer, say!
Thou, undiscoverably rapt away!—
Thou Light evanished, and thou World estranged!—
All unsubstantialised, perchance, and changed!—
In the rich effluence of immortal air,—
Glorified, and transfigurated there!
Thy very elements transfused—refined!—
Filtered and winnowed!—thou may'st be enshrined
'Mongst the empyreal suns of heaven's own light,
Far from the shadowy confines of the night!
And is there silence, breathless and intense,
Where thou wert glorying in magnificence—
Where thy deep harmonies rolled thundering by,
Shaking the strong foundations of the sky?
And is there chasmy desolation now
Where thou wert triumphing of old—O, thou
Bright, awful denizen of eternity?
No! like a huge unfathomable sea,
Shutting above the vessel's wake or wreck!
As thou hadst been a floating ray, a speck,
The vast, the mighty space fills up—and, lo!
No sign is left of thee—above, below!
And the uncommemorative air alone
Rolls where once rolled thy splendour-streaming throne—
The mighty space fills up—no trace is left
Of thee!—the ancient night is shorn, bereft,
Of thy deep beauty!—Whither art thou fled?
Throughout what realms interminably spread,
And what stupendous heights and depths afar
Hast thou careered in glory, thou lost star?
What is the goal of thy unmeasured race?
Mysterious wanderer from space to space!
Whither art thou inexorably fled?
How wert thou through the starry labyrinth led?
How charioteered? how harbingered? how borne
Beyond the uttermost regions of the morn,
Unto the unknown abyss that recks no bound?
And shall the regal Night be thus discrowned
Of all her starry splendours, one by one,
Till she remain upon her shadowy throne
Deserted—unilluminated—lone?
Majestic Night!—no Niobe art thou—
Thou mother of a thousand worlds! Thy brow,
Thou true Cybele! crowned with blazing towers,
In the dread pomp of thy victorious hours,
Is all as haughtily upreared in gloom,
Majestical, as ere the stroke of doom
Dissevered from thee that refulgent world,
Far from thy deep, untroubled bosom hurled!
And thou, abstracted star! thou, too, may'st be—
Nay, must—rejoicing in eternity;
But where the baffled thought may never dream,
Though strong to pierce creation's vasty scheme.
O, could this world through nameless ages last,
Her sons once more, in the ethereal waste,
Might view thee!—Since so far, so wildly far,
Thou may'st have been translated, vanished star!
(To realms where thought its course may never guide—
Distances unimaginably wide!)
That even the rapid lightning of thy ray
May linger for long centuries on its way!
But yet at last, rejoining earth's far sphere,
Once more—victorious over space—appear!