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Robert Laurence Binyon - The North Star
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I was contented with the warm silence,
 Sitting by the fire, book on knee;
 And fancy uncentred, afloat and astray,
 Idled from thought to thought
 Like a child picking flowers and dropping them
 In a meadow at play.
 I was contented with the kind silence,
 When there invaded me--
 Not a sound, no, there was no sound,
 But awareness of a menace
 Creeping up round
 The little island of my mind;
 A creeping up of gradual waves out of a sea,
 With storm coming behind;
 Wave on pale wave, smile on inhuman smile,
 Driven on by the black force of alien will
 To drown my world, to be the burial
 Of joy, beauty, and all
 That seemed impossible to kill;
 Even the secret home that hope inherited.
 I sat in an unreal room alone.
 Befriending and familiar shapes were gone:
 And I was seized with dread.

 Then I became restless,
 As if in bonds that must at any cost be burst.
 The very peace seemed to oppress:
 I was imprisoned and athirst,
 And rose, and crossed the floor,
 Craving to front the naked outer night.
 At the opened door
 Stood a thin mist, ghostly and motionless.

 Smell of the leaves rotting
 Breathed through a cold vapour
 Bitter to the nostril.
 My feet stumbled;
 In my heart was a cry:
 O for some single point of certitude!
 I lifted up my face, and saw the sky.

 There where I stood
 Low mist clung to the earth.
 But above, pale and diminished,
 Only the larger lights pierced the dim air.
 I faced the North.
 And far and faint over a shadowy pine
 That rose out of the mist
 I saw the North Star shine.

 I remembered sailors of old
 For whom unclouded night
 Was stretched above the dark Mediterranean,
 A blue tapestry pricked with powdery gold,
 Where legendary presences shone bright,
 Each with a memory and a name;
 And under the luminous maze
 Steering by the North Star
 Ships to their harbour came.

 And now through thick silence
 On the stifled fog--possessed Atlantic
 I was hearing, distant or near,
 Muffled answer of horn to horn,
 The rocking clang of the buoy--bell,--
 Sound crossing sound, to warn
 Steamers, that on their blinded motion still
 Unfaltering over seas invisible
 Held to a silent clue
 Because with the assurance of that star
 The needle points them true.

 There was a voice whispered:
 Ascend, ascend!
 Out of the earthy vapour, out
 Of the invading doubt,
 Into deliverance, into bare
 Heights of unmeasured air.
 Utterly stilled I stood,
 Climbing in dizzying thought without an end
 To that magnetic light,
 That affirmation of old certitude.
 And pinnacled alone in the vast night
 My thought was there.

 Oh, earth is gone.
 My earth is lost.
 North Star, North Star,
 Dost thou fail me?
 Thou art not what thou wast,
 And all I was is taken from my mind:
 For there is neither path nor direction
 For any thought to find,
 No North, nor South, nor East, nor West,
 But homelessness suspended out of time,
 Where I had sought to climb.
 North Star, it was no shroud
 Of mist, nor glory of overflowing sun;
 It was no blotting curtain of blank cloud,
 But a thought in the mind that deposed thee.

 Down, down I sink:
 Earth again holds me.
 Again, North Star, I see thee shine.
 But from the naked night I will not shrink;
 And privately I take
 A courage for thy sake,
 Because thou hast thy place and I have mine;
 Because I still need thee;
 Because thou need`st not me.
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