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Archibald Lampman - Alcyone
Work rating: Low

In the silent depth of space,
 Immeasurably old, immeasurably far,
 Glittering with a silver flame
 Through eternity,
 Rolls a great and burning star,
 With a noble name,
     Alcyone!

 In the glorious chart of heaven
 It is marked the first of seven;
 `Tis a Pleiad:
 And a hundred years of earth
 With their long-forgotten deeds have come and gone,
 Since that tiny point of light,
 Once a splendour fierce and bright,
 Had its birth
 In the star we gaze upon.

 It has travelled all that time--
 Thought has not a swifter flight--
 Through a region where no faintest gust
 Of life comes ever, but the power of night
 Dwells stupendous and sublime,
 Limitless and void and lonely,
 A region mute with age, and peopled only
 With the dead and ruined dust
 Of worlds that lived eternities ago.

 Man! when thou dost think of this,
 And what our earth and its existence is,
 The half-blind toils since life began,
 The little aims, the little span,
 With what passion and what pride,
 And what hunger fierce and wide,
 Thou dost break beyond it all,
 Seeking for the spirit unconfined
 In the clear abyss of mind
 A shelter and a peace majestical.
 For what is life to thee,
 Turning toward the primal light,
 With that stern and silent face,
 If thou canst not be
 Something radiant and august as night,
 Something wide as space?

 Therefore with a love and gratitude divine
 Thou shalt cherish in thine heart for sign
 A vision of the great and burning star,
 Immeasurably old, immeasurably far,
 Surging forth its silver flame
 Through eternity;
 And thine inner heart shall ring and cry
 With the music strange and high,
 The grandeur of its name
     Alcyone!
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