VIII. Ad Sodales

The stars are clear in heaven, and all the slopes
Are slumbering in the silence of the night;
I hear a distant noise of waterfalls;
Far to the northward the great hills of snow
Thrust up their moon-kissed pinnacles; deep peace
Is on the happy world—the peace of God.
The peace of God! when comes there such to me?
Yet life has changes; brothers, we know that,
Even from the bygone lustre; did we dream
(When first, amid the glimmer of the moon,
And the unnumbered laughings of the sea,
We launched our little vessel five years past)—
Dream of the voyage before us? Ah, since then
How many barks, as full of hope as ours,
And tended by as favourable winds,
Have perished from our knowledge; some gone down
To darkness, bearing, to the last, the hues
And beams of their destruction; some—ah, worse,
Still drift among the breakers of despair,
Without a compass—mastless, floating wrecks.
While, thanks to God—for surely not of us
The merit or the claim upon His love—
Our path is still upon serener waves,
Our rigging stout, our needle pointing true,
And our eyes fixed upon the Polar Star.