Isolation

  O Brother Planets, unto whom I cry,     Know ye, in all the worlds, a gladder thing     Than this glad life of ours, this wandering   Among the eternal winds that wander by?     Ever to fly, with white star-faces set     Quenchless against the darkness, and the wet Pinions of all the storms,—on, on alone,         With radiant locks outblown,     And sun-strong eyes to see     Into the sunless maze of all futurity!   Not ours the little measure of the years,     The bitter-sweet of summer that soon wanes,     The briefer benison of springtime rains;   Nay, but the thirst of all the living spheres,     Full-fed with mighty draughts of dark and light,—     The soul of all the dawns, the love of night, The strength of deathless winters, and the boon         Of endless summer noon.     Look down, from star to star,     And see the centuries,—a flock of birds, afar.   Afar! But we, each one God’s sentinel,     Lifting on high the torches that are His,     Look forth to one another o’er the abyss,   And cry, Eternity,—and all is well!     So ever journey we, and only know     The way is His, and unto Him we go. Through all the voiceless desert of the air         Through all the star-dust there,     Where none has ever gone,     Still singing, seeking still, we wander on and on.   O brother Planets, ye to whom I cry,     Yet hath a strange dream touched me; for a cloud     Flared like a moth, within mine eyes. I bowed   My head, and, looking down through all the sky,     I saw the little Earth, far down below,—     The Earth that all the wandering winds do know. Like some ground-bird, the small, beloved one         Fluttered about the sun.     Ah, were that little star     Only a signal-light of love for us, afar!