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.
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