OUT of the window I see a dozen great stars, burning bright, Flying in silence, engrossed in the uttermost depths of the night, Star beyond star, growing clear, flying on as I pass through the night. It's many days since last I saw the stars Look through the night sky's bars, Like mists and veils of shimmer and shining gauze— So little time we have and so much cause To stay beneath the roof; so much to do! The life we lead!... Well, you Get to your bed at ten, and you, away I like my glass of wine to end the day. Now as the train ambles on, slowly and I watch alone Stars and black woods and the stream, dim in the light of the stars Winding away to the past beneath Castor and Pollux and Mars; It seems as long since last I held your hand As since I saw the stars. And ah! if we meet in this land, And ah! if we meet oversea In the dark where the traffic of London races Or in these castled, woodland places— And then—wherever it be Shall not our thoughts go away into deeps Where the mind sleeps and the brain too sleeps, As when we take thought and we gaze Past all the bee swarms of stars Spread o'er the night and its bars, Past mists and veils and shimmer and shine and haze Into the deep and silent places, The still, unfathomable spaces Where the brain sleeps and the mind too sleeps And all the deeps stretch out beyond the deeps And thought dies down before infinity?... So, in an utter satisfaction Beyond all thought and beyond all action In a blindness more blind than the starless places I shall stretch my face to where your face is. And over head, over land and sea Shall the white stars wheel in their reverie. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ELEGY ON MR. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE by WILLIAM BASSE ELEGY: 11. THE BRACELET; UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESS'S CHAIN by JOHN DONNE THE MODERN MAJOR-GENERAL, FR. THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE by WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT BATUSCHKA by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE GODODDIN: CARADOC by ANEIRIN THE PHOENIX TO MRS. BUTTS by WILLIAM BLAKE |