In the silent depth of space, <br />Immeasurably old, immeasurably far, <br />Glittering with a silver flame <br />Through eternity, <br />Rolls a great and burning star, <br />With a noble name, <br />Alcyone! <br /> <br />In the glorious chart of heaven <br />It is marked the first of seven; <br />'Tis a Pleiad: <br />And a hundred years of earth <br />With their long-forgotten deeds have come and gone, <br />Since that tiny point of light, <br />Once a splendour fierce and bright, <br />Had its birth <br />In the star we gaze upon. <br /> <br />It has travelled all that time-- <br />Thought has not a swifter flight-- <br />Through a region where no faintest gust <br />Of life comes ever, but the power of night <br />Dwells stupendous and sublime, <br />Limitless and void and lonely, <br />A region mute with age, and peopled only <br />With the dead and ruined dust <br />Of worlds that lived eternities ago. <br /> <br />Man! when thou dost think of this, <br />And what our earth and its existence is, <br />The half-blind toils since life began, <br />The little aims, the little span, <br />With what passion and what pride, <br />And what hunger fierce and wide, <br />Thou dost break beyond it all, <br />Seeking for the spirit unconfined <br />In the clear abyss of mind <br />A shelter and a peace majestical. <br />For what is life to thee, <br />Turning toward the primal light, <br />With that stern and silent face, <br />If thou canst not be <br />Something radiant and august as night, <br />Something wide as space? <br /> <br />Therefore with a love and gratitude divine <br />Thou shalt cherish in thine heart for sign <br />A vision of the great and burning star, <br />Immeasurably old, immeasurably far, <br />Surging forth its silver flame <br />Through eternity; <br />And thine inner heart shall ring and cry <br />With the music strange and high, <br />The grandeur of its name <br />Alcyone!<br /><br />Archibald Lampman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/alcyone-2/
