William Cullen Bryant - Hymn to the North Star

Lyrics

The sad and solemn night Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires; The glorious host of light Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires; All through her silent watches, gliding slow Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go Day, too, hath many a star To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they: Through the blue fields afar Unseen, they follow in his flaming way: Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him And thou dost see them rise Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set Alone, in thy cold skies Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main There, at morn's rosy birth Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air And eve, that round the earth Chases the day, beholds thee watching there; There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls Alike, beneath thine eye The deeds of darkness and of light are done; High towards the star-lit sky Towns blaze, the smoke of battle blots the sun The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud On thy unaltering blaze The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost Fixes his steady gaze And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right And, therefore, bards of old Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood Did in thy beams behold A beauteous type of that unchanging good That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray The voyager of time should shape his heedful way