The Stars In Their Courses

And now, while the dark vast earth shakes and rocks     In this wild dream-like snare of mortal shocks,     How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars     On these magnificent, cruel wars?--     Venus, that brushes with her shining lips     (Surely!) the wakeful edge of the world and mocks     With hers its all ungentle wantonness?--     Or the large moon (pricked by the spars of ships     Creeping and creeping in their restlessness),     The moon pouring strange light on things more strange,     Looks she unheedfully on seas and lands     Trembling with change and fear of counterchange?     O, not earth trembles, but the stars, the stars!     The sky is shaken and the cool air is quivering.     I cannot look up to the crowded height     And see the fair stars trembling in their light,     For thinking of the starlike spirits of men     Crowding the earth and with great passion quivering:--     Stars quenched in anger and hate, stars sick with pity.     I cannot look up to the naked skies     Because a sorrow on dark midnight lies,     Death, on the living world of sense;     Because on my own land a shadow lies     That may not rise;     Because from bare grey hillside and rich city     Streams of uncomprehending sadness pour,     Thwarting the eager spirit's pure intelligence ...     How look (I muse) those cold and solitary stars     On these magnificent, cruel wars?     Stars trembled in broad heaven, faint with pity.     An hour to dawn I looked. Beside the trees     Wet mist shaped other trees that branching rose,     Covering the woods and putting out the stars.     There was no murmur on the seas,     No wind blew--only the wandering air that grows     With dawn, then murmurs, sighs,     And dies.     The mist climbed slowly, putting out the stars,     And the earth trembled when the stars were gone;     And moving strangely everywhere upon     The trembling earth, thickened the watery mist.     And for a time the holy things are veiled.     England's wise thoughts are swords; her quiet hours     Are trodden underfoot like wayside flowers,     And every English heart is England's wholly.     In starless night     A serious passion streams the heaven with light.     A common beating is in the air--     The heart of England throbbing everywhere.     And all her roads are nerves of noble thought,     And all her people's brain is but her brain;     And all her history, less her shame,     Is part of her requickened consciousness.     Her courage rises clean again.     Even in victory there hides defeat;     The spirit's murdered though the body survives,     Except the cause for which, a people strives     Burn with no covetous, foul heat.     Fights she against herself who infamously draws     The sword against man's secret spiritual laws.     But thou, England, because a bitter heel     Hath sought to bruise the brain, the sensitive will,     The conscience of the world,     For this, England, art risen, and shalt fight     Purely through long profoundest night,     Making their quarrel thine who are grieved like thee;     And (if to thee the stars yield victory)     Tempering their hate of the great foe that hurled     Vainly her strength against the conscience of the world.     I looked again, or dreamed I looked, and saw     The stars again and all their peace again.     The moving mist had gone, and shining still     The moon went high and pale above the hill.     Not now those lights were trembling in the vast     Ways of the nervy heaven, nor trembled earth:     Profound and calm they gazed as the soft-shod hours passed.     And with less fear (not with less awe,     Remembering, England, all the blood and pain)     How look, I cried, you stern and solitary stars     On these disastrous wars!     August, 1914.