The Star

I stood, one azure dusk, in old Auxerre

Before the grey Cathedral's towering height,

And in the Eastern darkness, very fair

I saw a little star that twinkled bright;

How small it looked beside the mighty pile,

Whose stone was rosy with the Western glow —

A little star — I pondered for a while,

And then the solemn truth began to know.

That tiny star was some enormous sphere,

The great cathedral was an atomy —

So often when grey trouble looms so near

That God shines in our minds but distantly,—

If we but thought, our grief would seem so small

That we would see that God's great love was all.