Stars

When all the world stands heaped in silent hills
About the dying Sun, I hear the stars
Start singing, as soldiers sing in far-off wars
When each man's thought the distant homeland fills.
I watch them trembling draw, as the nightingale trills,
Out of their skyey country, and the gleam
Of their strange gaze, bending o'er men that dream
Knee-bent in sleep, shines in earth's myriad rills;
These sing faint songs amongst the grass and fern
Of some far land that has been lost to them,
And under sombre boughs those Captives pale,
Linked like jewels on Evening's ebon urn,
The dark earth's quivering waters nightlong gem,
Till from the world faint ghosts, at dawn, they sail.