The tall slate roof is dull and grey,

We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep,

Like eyeless insects in a murky pond

Away, away, and there is no beyond.

No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet,

Visions of things we otherwhiles forget.

And as we brood at windows high,

Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky;

We watch, we watch, unwinking, pale and dumb,

Night sweeps o'er all the wide arch: Night has come.

Lurid and low and yellow and obscene,

The star-strewn Night, blue, potent and serene.

The turbid world around grows dim and small,

Our shrouded spirits from their dusty pall.

Not scorned but unremembered is the day;

Has brushed its heavy memories away.

The little stars so wide-eyed and so still,

Had wandered, tunnelling the endless hill;

Our souls slip out and tremble and expand,

The eternal holds the eternal by the hand.

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