The Star

Your image was not with me through the day,
I could not call your face before my eyes,
You seemed so far away—
So far away in thought, remote, apart.
And I exulted secretly to find
That I was free from your omnipotence.
And yet, though glad to think me free again.
Because I could not bring you to my mind
There lay from dawn to dawn upon my heart
The shadow of a loss—a troubled sense
Of dull grey emptiness—of something passed
Away, whose unmissed absence was a pain,
Like some old haunting memory that lies
Locked in a hidden chamber of the brain
Unknown, yet sadly leaving us aware
That something once was there,

Something, we know not what, we would have kept
Through all the troublous clamour of the day.
While thus your influence slept
I laboured and I cast my strength away
Fighting, with golden lures and gauds in view—
Things once renounced, held worthless, cast behind
But now renounced, now cast behind no more.

And then my secret exultation grew,
I could take back those things that I forswore,
Now that your image was not in my mind,
And as I laboured in the dusty glare,
So I rejoiced that I again was free.
But heavily upon my heart still lay
The shadow of something that had gone from there.

The long day waned. I turned my tired eyes
Towards the glooming skies.
Low in the west like dew among the fires
I saw a star
Shining against the crimson of the fires.
Paler than lilies are.
And as I looked on that low, silver gleam
It seemed to me I looked into your eyes
Dimly and infinitely from afar.
My hair was stirred by breathings of cool wind.
And like a voice in a forgotten dream
Heard in the outer spaces of the mind,
I heard your voice, faint, whispering, at my ear.

Over the world's white edge the slow night crept,
While day went slowly down her azure stair.
Heaven and earth grown one in silence slept.
And clear among the countless stars that shone
That one pale star gleamed on.

In that high moment of tranquillity,
When this, God's world, in breathless slumber lay
And He walked in the Garden once again—
In that high moment strove my soul in pain,
Strove in a sudden ecstasy of fire
To fashion something golden from the clay.
To bring one lily to the field of night.
To chant one stave to match the high stars' choir.

And so it drew your image for me there.
Out of the silver glooms, the dreamy air.
Out of the far, white stars, the soundless skies
Your image grew again before my eyes
Wonderful, near.

Sudden the shadow lifted from my heart,
And that dull pain of absence passed away.
I thought I had escaped you through the day,
I thrust your image from me, fled from you.
"She is not there!" I said, "and I am free!"
But then God's beauty touched the best of me.
The worst fell from me, and I saw your face,
And in that moment knew
That all the best of me was yours by grace.
That I had lost my freedom—and was free!