Ruler and hero, shining in the west
With great bright eye,
Rain down thy luminous arrows in this breast
With influence calm and high,
And speak to me of many things gone by.
Rememberest thou--'tis years since, wandering star--
Those eves in June,
When thou hung'st quivering o'er the tree-tops far,
Where, with discordant tune,
Many-tongued rooks hailed the red-rising moon?
Some watched thee then with human eyes like mine,
Whose boundless gaze
May now pierce on from orb to orb divine
Up to the Triune blaze
Of glory--nor be dazzled by its rays.
All things they know, whose wisdom seemed obscure;
They, sometime blamed,
Hold our best purities as things impure:
Their star-glance downward aimed,
Makes our most lamp-like deeds grow pale and shamed.
Their star-glance?--What if through those rays there gleam
Immortal eyes
Down to this dark? What if these thoughts, that seem
Unbidden to arise,
Be souls with my soul talking from the skies?
I know not. Yet awhile, and I shall know!--
Thou, to thy place
Slow journeying back, there startlingly to shew
Thy orb in liquid space,
Like a familiar death-lost angel face--
O planet! thou hast blotted out whole years
Of life's dull round;
The Abel-voice of heart's-blood and of tears
Sinks dumb into the ground,
And the green grass waves on with lulling sound.