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.