Calais Beacon
Those pale and filmy rays that reach to mariners, lost in
the night,
A hope of dawn and a light —
How soft and vague they lie along the darkness shrouding o'er,
The dim sea and the shore.
And many fall in vain across the untenanted marshes to
die.
And few where sailors cry ;
Yet, though the moon go out in clouds, and all of the stars grow wan.
Their paleness shineth on.
O souls, that save a world by night, ye too are no rays of the noon.
No glory and flood of the moon;
But pale and tender-shining things as yon faint beacon
atar.
Whiter than any star.
No planet names that all may tell, no meteor radiance
and glow.
For a wondering world to know.
You shine as pale and soft as that, you pierce the
stormy night.
And know not of your light!
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