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 seeThe 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 layThan 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 clingsTo hope for light, and seeks to understand.The centuries are God's days; the greatest leastIn his esteem. We have no glass to sweepHis universe. A hand's-breadth distant dies,To our poor ears, the strain whose echoes keepAll heaven glad. We do but grope and creep.There always is a day-star in the skies!