The Amateurs of Heaven



        Two lovers to a midnight meadow came
        High in the hills, to lie there hand in hand
        Like effigies and look up at the stars,
        The never-setting ones set in the North
        To circle the pole in idiot majesty,
        And wonder what was given them to wonder.

        Being amateurs, they knew some of the names
        By rote, and could attach the names to stars
        And draw the lines invisible between
        That humbled all the heavenly things to farm
        And forest things and even kitchen things,
        A bear, a wagon, a long-handled ladle 

        Could wonder at the shadow of the world
        That brought those lights to light, could wonder too
        At the ancestral eyes and the dark mind
        Behind them that had reached the length of light
        To name the stars and draw the animals
        And other stuff that dangled in the height,

        Or was it in the deep? Did they look in
        Or out, the lovers? till they grew bored
        As even lovers will, and got up to go, 
        But drunken now, with staggering and dizziness,
        Because the spell of earth had moved them so,
        Hallucinating that the heavens moved.

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