The Star-Treader and Other Poems

What nights retard thee, O Sirius!

Thy light is as a spear,

And thou penetratest them

As a warrior that stabbeth his foe

Even to the center of his life.

Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs;

They form a bridge thereover,

That shall endure till the links of the universe

Are unfastened, and drop apart,

And all the gulfs are one,

Dissevered by suns no longer.

How strong art thou in thy place!

Thou stridest thine orbit,

And the darkness shakes beneath thee,

As a road that is trodden by an army.

Thou art a god,

In thy temple that is hollowed with light

In the night of infinitude,

And whose floor is the lower void;

Thy worlds are as priests and ministers therein.

Thou furrowest space,

Even as an husbandman,

And sowest it with alien seed;

It beareth alien fruits,

And these are thy testimony,

Even as the crops of his fields

Are the testimony of an husbandman.