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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT.
Stands a child with her father, |
Watching the east, the autumn sky. |
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While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, |
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, |
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, |
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, |
And nigh at hand, only a very little above, |
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. |
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, |
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, |
Watching, silently weeps. |
With these kisses let me remove your tears, |
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, |
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in
apparition,
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Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the
Pleiades shall emerge,
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They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall
shine out again,
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The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they
endure,
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The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons
shall again shine.
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Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter? |
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? |
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, |
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) |
Something there is more immortal even than the stars, |
(Many the burials, many the days and night, passing away,) |
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, |
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, |
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. |
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