FAR up within the tranquil sky,
Far up it shone;
Floating, how gently, silently,
Floating alone!
A sunbeam touched its loftier side
With deepening light:
Then to its inmost soul did glide,
Divinely bright.
The cloud transfigured to a star,
Thro' all its frame
Throbbed in the fervent heavens afar,
One pulse of flame:
One pulse of flame, which inward turned,
And slowly fed
On its own heart, that burned, and burned,
'Till almost dead,
The cloud still imaged as a star,
Waned up the sky;
Waned slowly, pallid, ghost-like, far,
Wholly to die;
But die so grandly in the sun--
The noonfire's breath--
Methinks the glorious death it won,
Life! life! not death!
Meanwhile a million insect things
Crawl on below,
And gaudy worms on fluttering wings
Flit to and fro;
Blind to that cloud, which grown a star,
Divinely bright,
Waned in the deepening heavens afar,
Till--lost in light!
