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.
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