Here is the third of a trilogy of sonnets I’ve posted by the poet John Masefield. The poem I shared yesterday dwelt on death and dying… this one is different; stars brightly march through heaven, and yet, even in the heavens there is the a dying away and diminishing. However, from dead things new life springs… this poem has darkness and light, shadow and hope.
John Masefield had experienced plenty of darkness in his life by the time he came to write these sonnets; orphaned, sent to sea when little more than a child, he must have known about the depths of darkness and the heights of brilliance.
So in the empty sky the stars appear,
Are bright in heaven marching through the sky,
Spinning their planets, each one to his year,
Tossing their fiery hair until they die;
Then in the tower afar the watcher sees
The sun, that burned, less noble than it was,
Less noble still, until by dim degrees,
No spark of him is specklike in his glass.
Ten blind and dark in heaven the sun proceeds,
Vast, dead and hideous, knocking on his moons,
Till crashing on his like creation breeds,
Striking such life a constellation swoons.
From dead things striking fire a new sun springs,
New fire, new life, new planets with new wings
Lois Elsden 