Alcyone

In the silent depth of space,     Immeasurably old, immeasurably far,     Glittering with a silver flame     Through eternity,     Rolls a great and burning star,     With a noble name,     Alcyone!     In the glorious chart of heaven     It is marked the first of seven;     'Tis a Pleiad:     And a hundred years of earth     With their long-forgotten deeds have come and gone,     Since that tiny point of light,     Once a splendour fierce and bright,     Had its birth     In the star we gaze upon.     It has travelled all that time -     Thought has not a swifter flight -     Through a region where no faintest gust     Of life comes ever, but the power of night     Dwells stupendous and sublime,     Limitless and void and lonely,     A region mute with age, and peopled only     With the dead and ruined dust     Of worlds that lived eternities ago.     Man! when thou dost think of this,     And what our earth and its existence is,     The half-blind toils since life began,     The little aims, the little span,     With what passion and what pride,     And what hunger fierce and wide,     Thou dost break beyond it all,     Seeking for the spirit unconfined     In the clear abyss of mind     A shelter and a peace majestical.     For what is life to thee,     Turning toward the primal light,     With that stern and silent face,     If thou canst not be     Something radiant and august as night,     Something wide as space?     Therefore with a love and gratitude divine     Thou shalt cherish in thine heart for sign     A vision of the great and burning star,     Immeasurably old, immeasurably far,     Surging forth its silver flame     Through eternity;     And thine inner heart shall ring and cry     With the music strange and high,     The grandeur of its name     Alcyone!