THE stars are in the sky all day;
Each linkèd coil of Milky Way,
And every planet that we know,
Behind the sun are circling slow.
They sweep, they climb with stately tread,—
Venus the fair and Mars the red,
Saturn engirdled with clear light,
And Jupiter with moons of white.
Each knows his path and keeps due tryst;
Not even the smallest star is missed
From those wide fields of deeper sky
Which gleam and flash mysteriously,
As if God’s outstretched fingers must
Have sown them thick with diamond dust.
There are they all day long; but we,
Sun-blinded, have no eyes to see.
The stars are in the sky all day;
But when the sun has gone away,
And hovering shadows cool the west,
And call the sleepy birds to rest,
And heaven grows softly dim and dun,
Into its darkness one by one
Steal forth those starry shapes all fair—
We say steal forth, but they were there,
There all day long, unseen, unguessed,
Climbing the sky from east to west.
The angels saw them where they hid,
And so, perhaps, the eagles did,
For they can face the sharp sun-ray,
Nor wink, nor need to look away;
But we, blind mortals, gazed from far,
And did not see a single star.
I wonder if the world is full
Of other secrets beautiful,
As little guessed, as hard to see,
As this sweet starry mystery?
Do angels veil themselves in space,
And make the sun their hiding-place?
Do white wings flash as spirits go
On heavenly errands to and fro,
While we, down-looking, never guess
How near our lives they crowd and press?
If so, at life’s set we may see
Into the dusk steal noiselessly
Sweet faces that we used to know,
Dear eyes like stars that softly glow,
Dear hands stretched out to point the way,
And deem the night more fair than day.