# Lament of the Stars

1912.
One tone is mute within the starry singing, The unison fulfilled, complete before; One chord within the music sounds no more, And from the stir of flames forever winging The pinions of our sister, motionless In pits of indefinable duress, Are fallen beyond all recovery By exultation of the flying dance, Or rhythms holding as with sleep or trance The maze of stars that only death may free— Flung through the void's expanse.
In gulfs depressed nor in the gulfs exalted Shall shade nor lightening of her flame be found; In space that litten orbits gird around, Nor in the bottomless abyss unvaulted Of unenvironed, all-outlying night. Allotted gyre nor lawless comet-flight Shall find, and with its venturous ray return From gloom of undiscoverable scope, One ray of her to gladden into hope The doubtful eyes denied that truthward yearn, The faltering feet that grope.
Beyond restrainless boundary-nights surpassing All luminous horizons limited, The substance and the light of her have fed Ruin and silence of the night's amassing: Abandoned worlds forever morningless; Suns without worlds, in frory beamlessness Girt for the longer gyre funereal; Inviolate silence, earless, unawaking That once was found, and level calm unbreaking Where motion's many ways in oneness fall Of sleep beyond forsaking.
Circled with limitation unexceeded Our eyes behold exterior mysteries And gods unascertainable as these— Shadows and shapes irresolubly heeded; Phantoms that tower, and substance scarcely known. Our sister knows all mysteries one alone, One shape, one shadow, crowding out the skies; Whose eyeless head and lipless face debar All others nameless or familiar, Filling with night all former lips and eyes Of god, and ghost, and star:
For her all shapes have fed the shape of night; All darker forms, and dubious forms, or pallid, Are met and reconciled where none is valid. But unto us solution nor respite Of mystery's multiform incessancy From unexplored or system-trodden sky Shall come; but as a load importunate, Enigma past and mystery foreseen Weigh mightily upon us, and between Our sorrow deepens, and our songs abate In cadences of threne.
A gloom that gathers silence looms more closely, And quiet centering darkness at its heart; But from the certitude of night depart Uncertain god nor eidolon less ghostly; But stronger grown with strength obtained from light That failed, and power lent by the stronger night, Perplex us with new mystery, and doubt If these our flames, that deathward toss and fall Be festal lights or lights funereal For mightier gods within the gulfs without, Phantoms more cryptical.
New shadows from the wings of Time unfolding Across the depth and eminence of years, Fall deeplier with the broadening gloom of fears. Prophetic-eyed, with planet-hosts beholding The night take form upon the face of suns, We see (thus grief's vaticination runs— Presageful sorrow for our sister slain) A night wherein all sorrow shall be past, One with night's single mystery at last; Nor vocal sun nor singing world remain As Time's elegiast.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1961, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 62 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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