Poems (Jackson)/The Day-Star in the East

by Helen Hunt Jackson

THE DAY-STAR IN THE EAST.

I

ACH morning, in the eastern sky, I see
The star that morning dares to call its own.
Night's myriads it has outwatched and outshone;
Full radiant dawn pales not its majesty;
Peer of the sun, his herald fit and free.
Sudden from earth, dark, heavy mists are blown;
The city's grimy smoke, to pillars grown,
Climbs up the sky, and hides the star from me.
Strange, that a film of smoke can blot a star!
On comes, with blinding glare, the breathless day:
The star is gone. The moon doth surer lay
Than midnight gloom, athwart its light, a bar.
But steadfast as God's angels planets are.
To-morrow's dawn will show its changeless ray.

II.

The centuries are God's days; within his hand,
Held in the hollow, as a balance swings,
Less than its dust, are all our temporal things.
Long are his nights, when darkness steeps the land;
Thousands of years fill one slow dawn's demand;
The human calendar its measure brings,
Feeble and vain, to lift the soul that clings
To hope for light, and seeks to understand.
The centuries are God's days; the greatest least
In his esteem. We have no glass to sweep
His universe. A hand's-breadth distant dies,
To our poor ears, the strain whose echoes keep
All heaven glad. We do but grope and creep.
There always is a day-star in the skies!