Lament Of The Stars

One tone is mute within the starry singing,         The unison fulfilled, complete before;         One chord within the music sounds no more,         And from the stir of flames forever winging         The pinions of our sister, motionless         In pits of indefinable duress,         Are fallen beyond all recovery         By exultation of the flying dance,         Or rhythms holding as with sleep or trance         The maze of stars that only death may free -         Flung through the void's expanse.         In gulfs depressed nor in the gulfs exalted         Shall shade nor lightening of her flame be found;         In space that litten orbits gird around,         Nor in the bottomless abyss unvaulted         Of unenvironed, all-outlying night.         Allotted gyre nor lawless comet-flight         Shall find, and with its venturous ray return         From gloom of undiscoverable scope,         One ray of her to gladden into hope         The doubtful eyes denied that truthward yearn,         The faltering feet that grope.         Beyond restrainless boundary-nights surpassing         All luminous horizons limited,         The substance and the light of her have fed         Ruin and silence of the night's amassing:         Abandoned worlds forever morningless;         Suns without worlds, in frory beamlessness         Girt for the longer gyre funereal;         Inviolate silence, earless, unawaking         That once was sound, and level calm unbreaking         Where motion's many ways in oneness fall         Of sleep beyond forsaking.         Circled with limitation unexceeded         Our eyes behold exterior mysteries         And gods unascertainable as these -         Shadows and shapes irresolubly heeded;         Phantoms that tower, and substance scarcely known.         Our sister knows all mysteries one alone,         One shape, one shadow, crowding out the skies;         Whose eyeless head and lipless face debar         All others nameless or familiar,         Filling with night all former lips and eyes         Of god, and ghost, and star:         For her all shapes have fed the shape of night;         All darker forms, and dubious forms, or pallid,         Are met and reconciled where none is valid.         But unto us solution nor respite         Of mystery's multiform incessancy         From unexplored or system-trodden sky         Shall come; but as a load importunate,         Enigma past and mystery foreseen         Weigh mightily upon us, and between         Our sorrow deepens, and our songs abate         In cadences of threne.         A gloom that gathers silence looms more closely,         And quiet centering darkness at its heart;         But from the certitude of night depart         Uncertain god nor eidolon less ghostly;         But stronger grown with strength obtained from light         That failed, and power lent by the stronger night,         Perplex us with new mystery, and doubt         If these our flames, that deathward toss and fall         Be festal lights or lights funereal         For mightier gods within the gulfs without,         Phantoms more cryptical.         New shadows from the wings of Time unfolding         Across the depth and eminence of years,         Fall deeplier with the broadening gloom of fears.         Prophetic-eyed, with planet-hosts beholding         The night take form upon the face of suns,         We see (thus grief's vaticination runs -         Presageful sorrow for our sister slain)         A night wherein all sorrow shall be past,         One with night's single mystery at last;         Nor vocal sun nor singing world remain         As Time's elegiast.