UNDER the stars, across whose patient eyes The wind is brushing flecks of filmy cloud, I wait for kindly night to hush and calm The wrangling throng of cares and discontents, The tangled troubles of a feverish brain. From far-off church-towers, distance-muffled bells Are slowly tolling dying midnight's age. A surging wind sighs through the shadowy trees, Like surf that breaks on an invisible beach, And sends a spray of whispers on the air. I hear the rushing of the wings of Time Sweep by me. Voices of the murmuring Past Chant a low dirge above my kneeling heart. I hear -- or is it only the wild wind Telling its ghostly dreams to the dark trees? -- Amid its pauses, as irresolute And purposeless it gropes in fitful gusts Throughout the darkness, sounds of years ago. Sometimes it seems the rustle of a step, Which made my heart beat in those years ago -- Which makes me weep to listen for it now; Sometimes a little foolish whispered phrase, That you would smile at, if one uttered it -- At which I smiled even as I treasured it; A warm breath brushing lightly by my cheek -- A low-toned fragment of a sad old song -- I almost think them real, so crazed am I, Till the shrill wind whirls them in scorn away, And shrieks its laughter far into the gloom. Oh, brooding night! thou mockest so bitterly With thy wild visions and thy weird-winged wind, That I could well believe thee all unreal, And our whole world only a phantasy, And we far-slanted shadows of some life That walks between our planet and its God. Oh, stars of Heaven! will ye not comfort me? Voices of brother-men from long ago, Come up to me, clasped in the leaves of books, That tell how they too dreamed the dream of life, And how, over Earth's flitting phantom forms Ye shone serene and steadfast as to-night. Unseal, unseal the secret, for whose hour Ye wait in hushed and breathless watchfulness Till God reveal the mystery of His will. Is it not time to tell us why we live? So many years we sleep, and wake, and sleep, While -- like some Magian through the mysteries Leading in fear the blindfold neophyte -- Time leads us dimly on, till angrily Tired life would turn and throttle its stern guide, Till he should tell us whither and how long. But Time gives back no answer, and the stars Burn on, cold, hushed, and changeless as before, And we go back baffled and stolidly To the old, weary, hollow-hearted world; To the old, endless search for life in death -- The restless, hopeless roaming after rest. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONNET; OXFORD, 1916 by GEORGE SANTAYANA PICCADILLY CIRCUS AT NIGHT: STREETWALKERS by DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE A CANADIAN BOAT SONG; WRITTEN ON THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE by THOMAS MOORE THE KNIGHTS: DEMOS AND HIS FLATTERER by ARISTOPHANES |