All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. The following sentence, from Walter Besant, in “All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” well expresses the key-thought of this little gem of a poem: “So great is the beauty of human nature, even in its second rate or third rate productions, that love generally follows when one of the two, by confession or unconscious self-betrayal, stands revealed to the other.” Compare also the closing stanzas of “One Word More,” especially stanza 18. |