  Untaught, I meet the question of the hours— Travail and prayer and call; But ye, with stillness deeper than the flow’rs’, O stars! can answer all. Now, tho’ the sapphire walls of noon forbid Your beams compassionate, Witheld by light, as love by silence hid, Unchanging ye await, Till Day, whom all the swords of sunset bar From Edens daily lost, Pass, and your lonely armies sink afar To oceans nightly crost. Ah! when, ere long, I watch your kingdoms reach Past the departed sun, Will ye, in silence holier than speech, Tell that our ways are one?— That I, as ye, vanish awhile in day (The day we reckon night), Till dusks of birth reveal the backward way To darkness reckoned light? Come! for the ancient Altar waits your flame, The seas of shadow call, And, exile of a land I cannot name, Homesick, I question all. |
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