Like harbour-lights the stars grow wide before me,
I draw my worlds ten thousand leagues a day.
Their far blue seas like April eyes adore me.
They follow, dreaming, on my soundless way.
How should they know, who wheel around my burning,
What torments bore them, or what power am I,
I, that with all those worlds around me turning,
Sail, every hour, from sky to unplumbed sky?
My planets, these live embers of my passion,
These children of my hurricanes of flame,
Flung thro' the night, for midnight to refashion,
Praise, and forget, the splendour whence they came.
THE EARTH
_Was it a dream that, in those bright dominions,
Are other worlds that sing, with lives like mine,
Lives that with beating hearts and broken pinions
Aspire and fall, half-mortal, half-divine?
A grain of dust among those glittering legions—
Am I, I only, touched with joy and tears?
0, silver sisters, from your azure regions,
Breathe, once again, your music of the spheres:—_
VENUS
A nearer sun, a rose of light arises,
To clothe my glens with richer clouds of flowers,
To paint my clouds with ever new surprises
And wreathe with mist my rosier domes and towers;
Where now, to praise their gods, a throng assembles
Whose hopes and dreams no sphere but mine has known.
On other worlds the same warm sunlight trembles;
But life, love, worship, these are mine alone.