The Jolly Company

The stars, a jolly company,

I envied, straying late and lonely;

And cried upon their revelry:

“O white companionship! You only

In love, in faith unbroken dwell,

Friends radiant and inseparable!”

But I, remembering, pitied well

And loved them, who, with lonely light,

In empty infinite spaces dwell,

Disconsolate. For, all the night,

I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,

Star to faint star, across the sky.