Morning Star

Enough of this sun and moon neighbouring glory— Enough of this office of heralding dawn!

Worthless to me the abodes of the planets, Lowly earth-dwelling is more than these heights

I inhabit, to heaven but a realm of extinction, Dawn’s skirt of the hundred-fold rent for my shroud

To live, to die daily my fate, to be poured The morning-draught first by the cupbearer Death

Thankless this duty, this station, this dignity— Better the dark then to shine for one hour!

No star would I be, if it lay in my will, But a gleaming white pearl in the cavernous sea,

And then, if too fearful the strife of the waves, Leave ocean, and hang in some necklace

what joyIt would be there to glitter as beauty’s bright pendent, A gem in the crown of an emperor’s consort

What fragment of stone, if its destiny smiled, Might not flash in the ring on the finger of Solomon?

But glory of all such in this world must vanish, The rich gem must vanish at last.

Lives, that need have no acquaintance with death: Can that be called life, that hears death’s importunity?

If, making earth lovely, our end must be thus, Let me rather be changed to a flower-falling dewdrop,

A speck in the gold-dust that paints a bride’s forehead, A spark in the sigh that a wounded heart breathes

Or why not the glistening tear-drop that rolls Down the long lashes fringing the eyes of a lady

Whose lord, in chain armour enmeshed, must set forth To the battlefield, hurried by love of his country,

A woman whose face like a picture shows hope and despair side by side, and whose silence shames speech

her patient thoughts built on her husband’s firm soul, Her looks from their modesty borrowing eloquence

That hour of farewell when the rosy cheek pales And the sorrow of parting makes beauty more beautiful

There, though she locked up her heart, I would gleam, One waterdrop split from her eye’s brimming cup,

To find in the dust an immortal new life, And teach to the world the long passion of love