C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Lost Pleiad

AND is there glory from the heavens departed?

O void unmarked!—thy sisters of the sky

Still hold their place on high,

Though from its rank thine orb so long hath started,—

Thou that no more art seen of mortal eye.

Hath the night lost a gem, the regal night?

She wears her crown of old magnificence,

Though thou art exiled thence;

No desert seems to part those urns of light,

Midst the far depth of purple gloom intense.

They rise in joy, the starry myriads burning:

The shepherd greets them on his mountains free;

And from the silvery sea

To them the sailor’s wakeful eye is turning—

Unchanged they rise, they have not mourned for thee.

Couldst thou be shaken from thy radiant place,

E’en as a dewdrop from the myrtle spray,

Swept by the wind away?

Wert thou not peopled by some glorious race,

And was there power to smite them with decay?

Why, who shall talk of thrones, of sceptres riven?

Bowed be our hearts to think of what we are,

When from its height afar

A world sinks thus—and yon majestic heaven

Shines not the less for that one vanished star!