STAR DRIFT

The glaring sun hath ceased to shine;

The solemn stars invade the sky;

Again the welcome night is mine,

Wherein to view the worlds on high;

The night! when heaven bares its face,

And man with reverent soul can trace

The awful mysteries of space.

Too long the shadeless solar blaze

Hath forced my vision toward the sod;

‘ Tis night alone that helps us raise

Our thoughts from littleness to God,

And by its darkness sets us free

To gaze across what seems to be

The portal of Eternity.

I watch the stellar hosts ascend

Their devious paths in slow array,

And note the place where millions blend

To form the fabled Milky Way,— -

That zone of radiant suns, whose light

Hath needed centuries of flight

To reach our little earth to-night,

Through lenses scanned, its golden haze

Resolves itself to points that glow

In one stupendous, brilliant maze

Of countless orbs, that come and go

On pathways we may never learn,

However long their light may burn,

However ardently we yearn.

Apparently so densely strewn,

But oh! what gulfs those suns divide!

As each pursues its course alone

Beyond an interval as wide

As that which yawns between our own

And any of those star-seeds sown

In astral gardens, still unknown.

Sometimes from that resplendent sheen

A new light gleams across the void,

And, awe-struck, we conceive the scene

Of two vast solar orbs destroyed;

By fearful impact changed again,

Unnumbered miles beyond our ken,

To leagues of blazing hydrogen.

Before such marvels, what are we

To plume ourselves in foolish pride?

Within that dim immensity

How many suns and earths have died!

The tiny mote on which we stand,

However fair and finely planned,

Is nothing but a grain of sand.

To-day, as through the ages gone,

By law impelled, by law restrained,

Suns, planets, systems,— all sweep on

Toward bourns still dark and unexplained;

Some bright with youth, some dull with age,

Their varied colors well presage

Their distance from the final stage.

For all are doomed at last to die!

On heaven's blue sea each isle of fire,

Of all that now enchant the eye,

Must finally in gloom expire;

Though all may still roll on, unseen,

As blackened cinders, while between

Dark, lifeless planets intervene.

And then? The mind sinks back in dread!

Such burnt-out worlds may well appal,

If they must still continue dead,

And universal night end all;

But, one by one, as speed shall fail,

Each may some rival mass assail,

Till nebulas again prevail.

But not for long! A refluent spurge

Shall that destructive course reverse,

And cause those sun-mists to converge

To mould another universe;

Again shall constellations rise,

And suns and planets light the skies,

And man regain his paradise.

For thus with rhythmic sweep sublime

Swings Chaos on to Cosmos; then

In ages, measureless by time,

Rolls Cosmos back to mist again,

In one stupendous ebb and flow,

As aeons come and aeons go,

With all their freight of weal and woe.

Hard, cruel, hopeless? It may be.

We know too little to decide;

Yet hope that o'er that starlit sea

Some steadfast, God-directed tide

Will one day bear us to a shore,

Where we shall find our lost once more,

And what was here unknown, adore.