Star of Hope

As I stare at the wreckage of my life,

The fractured nights and days of strife,

The promises broken into frozen parts,

And love that yearns in fits and starts-

Lists of ambition dead as stone,

Unseemly dreams uncouthly blown,

And over all a clinging swathe

Of loneliness and bitter waste...

I see arise, as from afar

The figure of a fiery star,

That from this morass rises free

And clothes itself in seeming purity.

And that I call a hellish paradise

Is where this Star of Hope has fullest life.

The star of acid, star of cutting spite!

Whose hatred will illuminate my night-

And sorrow raised to such a pitch shall be

The friend of subtlest sanctity-

The star of joy and dull despair

Enmixed, can burn full bright and fair

Enough to burn the eyes of they

That cherish all the fullest day.

No, I have hidden from the sun,

And if that night is to be borne,

A Star of Hope must lighten me;

Like to the light that shepherds watch,

From Christmas to Epiphany.