Poetry Archives

The stars, a jolly company,
 I envied, straying late and lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
 “O white companionship!  You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends radiant and inseparable!”

Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
 And merry comrades (Even so
God out of heaven may laugh to see
 The happy crowds; and never know
That in his lone obscure distress
Each walketh in a wilderness).

But I, remembering, pitied well
 And loved them, who, with lonely light,
In empty infinite spaces dwell,
 Disconsolate.  For, all the night,
I heard the thin gnat-voices cry,
Star to faint star, across the sky.