That makes her look so large and yet so dim.'

"But I gazed round, and all her lustrous peers
In her red presence showed but wan and white
For like a living coal beheld through tears
She glowed and quivered with a gloomy light:
Methought she trembled, as all sick through fears,
Helpless, appalled, appealing to the night;
Like one who throws his arms up to the sky
And bows down suffering, hopeless of reply.

"At length, as if an everlasting Hand
Had taken hold upon her in her place,
And swiftly, like a golden grain of sand,
Through all the deep infinitudes of space
Was drawing her--God's truth as here I stand--
Backward and inward to itself; her face
Fast lessened, lessened, till it looked no more
Than smallest atom on a boundless shore.

"And she that was so fair, I saw her lie,
The smallest thing in God's great firmament,
Till night was lit the darkest, and on high
Her sisters glittered, though her light was spent;
I strained, to follow her, each aching eye,
So swiftly at her Maker's will she went;
I looked again--I looked--the star was gone,
And nothing marked in heaven where she had shone."

"Gone!" said the Poet, "and about to be